CCA Bul­letin 34/07

Octo­ber 17, 2007
On Octo­ber 16, 2007, the Gov­er­nor Gen­eral, the Right Hon­ourable Michaëlle Jean, deliv­ered the Speech from the Throne, mark­ing the open­ing of the sec­ond ses­sion of the 39th Par­lia­ment of Canada.

The Speech, which is an out­line of the Government’s plans for the Par­lia­men­tary ses­sion, included five gen­eral areas:

• Strength­en­ing Canada’s Sov­er­eignty and Place in the World
• Strength­en­ing the Fed­er­a­tion and our Demo­c­ra­tic Institutions
• Pro­vid­ing Effec­tive Eco­nomic Lead­er­ship for a Pros­per­ous Future
• Tack­ling Crime and Strength­en­ing the Secu­rity of Canadians
• Improv­ing the Envi­ron­ment and the Health of Canadians.

Of par­tic­u­lar note to the arts and cul­ture sec­tor are two spe­cific ref­er­ences to our sector:

“Our Gov­ern­ment will improve the pro­tec­tion of cul­tural and intel­lec­tual prop­erty rights in Canada, includ­ing copy­right reform.”

and,

‘Our Gov­ern­ment will announce an infra­struc­ture , the Build­ing Canada Plan, to sup­port our long term growth…..The result will be safer roads and bridges, shorter com­mutes, more com­pet­i­tive busi­ness, improved cul­tural infra­struc­ture and a bet­ter qual­ity of life for Canadians.’

The Speech also affirmed the gov­ern­ment of Canada’s com­mit­ment to lin­guis­tic dual­ity by devel­op­ing a strat­egy for the next phase of the Action Plan for Offi­cial Lan­guages.

The Gov­ern­ment also intends to restrain the use of the fed­eral spend­ing power in areas of exclu­sive provin­cial juris­dic­tion. When it devel­ops new fed­eral pro­grams in these areas, it will only do so with the con­sent of the provinces. There will also be an opt­ing out pro­vi­sion and appro­pri­ate com­pen­sa­tion pay­ments to those who elect this route.

Tell Me More

Very lit­tle to hang the cul­tural hat on in the Throne Speech, but then, when is the last time we have had any major ref­er­ence to cul­ture in such par­lia­men­tary ritual?

The Strength­en­ing Canada’s Sov­er­eignty and Place in the World sec­tion of the Speech makes no ref­er­ence to pub­lic diplo­macy or to the role of aca­d­e­mics, artists, cre­ators and cul­ture pro­fes­sion­als in advanc­ing our national for­eign pol­icy objectives.

It omits any ref­er­ence to nei­ther the forth­com­ing 2010 Win­ter Olympics in Vancouver/Whistler nor any strat­egy to ensure that the ben­e­fits of host­ing the world should be exploited once the games are over. This event will gen­er­ate enor­mous amounts of pub­lic­ity for Canada and Cana­dian ath­letic and artis­tic tal­ent. It would be sad if these extra­or­di­nary oppor­tu­ni­ties were to be lost, a fact Aus­tralia regrets after the suc­cess of the Syd­ney games.

The CCA had expressed con­cerns about the pro­posal to limit fed­eral spend­ing to areas of exclu­sive fed­eral juris­dic­tion. We did so because of the vague­ness within the Con­sti­tu­tion regard­ing the respon­si­bil­ity for cul­ture and the impor­tant role the fed­eral gov­ern­ment has to play in that field, in coop­er­a­tion with the provin­cial and munic­i­pal gov­ern­ments. In its sub­mis­sion on Advan­tage Canada,  the CCA asked the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to affirm its com­mit­ment to the cul­tural and artis­tic pro­grams and insti­tu­tions that have been cre­ated over the years. While the Speech from the Throne did not make such a com­mit­ment, the pro­posal as it appears in the text seems to take a more bal­anced approach to this issue.

The CCA is glad to hear that we should soon see (before Christ­mas?) what amend­ments the gov­ern­ment has in mind for the Copy­right Act. This is a very com­plex issue, with strong oppo­site views and inter­ests to rec­on­cile, but an issue that affects many peo­ple within the cul­tural sec­tor and that is crit­i­cal to the over­all health of national cul­tural expres­sion, in all forms. Given the impor­tance and the com­plex­ity of the ques­tion, the CCA is busy putting together an inter­nal con­sul­ta­tion process to pre­pare our posi­tion when the amend­ments are pre­sented to the House of Commons.

Noth­ing new in the infra­struc­ture invest­ment pro­gram already announced in the 2007–2008 fed­eral bud­get: cul­tural infra­struc­ture invest­ment projects at the com­mu­nity level will be eli­gi­ble and will com­pete for atten­tion with roads, bridges and arenas.

Broad based tax cuts, a renewed com­mit­ment to our sov­er­eignty in the Arc­tic and a stir­ring defense of the role our mil­i­tary and vet­er­ans and our inter­na­tional efforts in Afghanistan and Haiti round out the upbeat and focused approach evi­dent in this Speech.

It is now up to our elected offi­cials to begin the polit­i­cal maneu­ver­ing around this agenda, which could trig­ger another fed­eral elec­tion, as the gov­ern­ment begins to intro­duce leg­is­la­tion across its five pri­or­ity areas. The CCA is pre­pared to keep our mem­ber­ship and the arts and cul­ture sec­tor fully informed in the event that this happens.