CCA Bul­letin 02/07

Jan­u­ary 24 2007

Just the facts

The UNESCO Con­ven­tion on the pro­tec­tion and pro­mo­tion of the diver­sity of cul­tural expres­sions will come into force on March 18, 2007. This is the lat­est stage in a remark­able cam­paign and process in which the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA) has been an impor­tant player. The CCA cel­e­brates this his­toric achieve­ment and Canada’s inter­na­tional lead­er­ship, and con­grat­u­lates all those from the Cana­dian arts and cul­ture com­mu­nity who have been instru­men­tal in this effort.

When 12 mem­ber coun­tries of the Euro­pean Union and the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion deposited their instru­ments of rat­i­fi­ca­tion with UNESCO on Decem­ber 18 2006, the nec­es­sary min­i­mum num­ber of coun­tries had been achieved to ensure the Con­ven­tion will come into force in 2007. Canada, which had played a lead­ing role in this file, was the first coun­try to rat­ify the Con­ven­tion in late Novem­ber 2005. The thresh­old was reached only 14 months after the Con­ven­tion was adopted by UNESCO, remark­ably quick for a legally-binding inter­na­tional treaty.

The com­ing into force of the new Con­ven­tion is only the next mile­stone in a long process and the CCA will con­tinue to play an active part. While some com­men­ta­tors feel the oblig­a­tions on mem­ber states under the Con­ven­tion are inad­e­quate to make it an effec­tive shield against trade and invest­ment agree­ments, every­one agrees the Con­ven­tion must be sup­ported as an impor­tant polit­i­cal instru­ment that can make a dif­fer­ence. Cam­paigns are under­way to urge more coun­tries to sign onto the Con­ven­tion, since its impact will increase in direct pro­por­tion to the num­ber of sig­na­tory coun­tries. How the Con­ven­tion is imple­mented by UNESCO will also go a long way to deter­min­ing how effec­tive it will be in achiev­ing the objec­tives, and the Convention’s sup­port­ers have begun work­ing on these issues.

For more back­ground, and analy­sis of the Con­ven­tion and its poten­tial, please see www.incd.net, www.cdc-ccd.org and www.unesco.org.

Tell me more

CCA’s role in the process stretches back to Octo­ber 1997 when it released a sig­nif­i­cant study on the poten­tial con­se­quences for Canada’s cul­tural poli­cies of the pro­posed Mul­ti­lat­eral Agree­ment on Invest­ment (MAI). The report pointed out that France’s pro­posal for a “cul­tural excep­tion” would have offered only a par­tial pro­tec­tion. In Canada, debates around the MAI and con­tem­po­rary trade nego­ti­a­tions led many to con­clude that the “cul­tural excep­tion” approach was inad­e­quate. From these dis­cus­sions, the con­cept emerged that what was needed was a new inter­na­tional instru­ment that would con­firm the sov­er­eign right of states to imple­ment poli­cies to pro­mote their own cul­tures and write appro­pri­ate rules for trade in cul­tural goods and services.

In June 1998, CCA conve ned the At Home in the World con­fer­ence where del­e­gates from a num­ber of coun­tries decided that civil soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions needed to work together to respond to the adverse affects of eco­nomic glob­al­iza­tion on cul­tures. One of the out­comes of this meet­ing was the launch of the orga­ni­za­tion that became the Inter­na­tional Net­work for Cul­tural Diver­sity (INCD). CCA mem­bers and the Sec­re­tariat were heav­ily involved in the early days of the INCD and Cana­dian del­e­gates were by far the most numer­ous at the Sep­tem­ber 2000 found­ing meet­ing of INCD, which endorsed the con­cept of the Con­ven­tion. In many pre­sen­ta­tions the CCA has made in the cur­rent decade, it has urged Cana­dian gov­ern­ments and civil soci­ety to sup­port the Convention.

The CCA and many of its impor­tant mem­bers have also been active par­tic­i­pants in Canada’s Coali­tion for Cul­tural Diver­sity (CCD), espe­cially since it decided in late 1999 to expand its scope beyond its ini­tial mem­ber­ship base in Québec. The CCD has helped to build coali­tions in many oth­ers coun­tries and they have played an impor­tant role in build­ing sup­port for the Con­ven­tion, both domes­ti­cally and internationally.

From 1999 until just this past Decem­ber, the CCA hosted the inter­na­tional head­quar­ters of the INCD. CCA regrets that the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage announced in Octo­ber 2006 that it would no longer pro­vide funds for INCD in the cur­rent fis­cal year which started on April 01.

A Few Loose Ends to Tie Up From Late 2006…

On the 13 th of Decem­ber of last year the Min­is­ter of Cana­dian Her­itage, the Hon. Bev Oda, con­firmed that Canada Post will main­tain its $15 mil­lion con­tri­bu­tion to sup­port Cana­dian mag­a­zines and com­mu­nity news­pa­pers through the Pub­li­ca­tions Assis­tance Pro­gram until 2009. The Pub­li­ca­tions Assis­tance Pro­gram, admin­is­tered by Cana­dian Her­itage in coop­er­a­tion with Canada Post Cor­po­ra­tion, sub­si­dizes mail­ing costs of over 1200 Cana­dian mag­a­zines and non-daily newspapers.

The full announce­ment also says that, “Dur­ing the period of fund­ing sta­bil­ity for Cana­dian peri­od­i­cal pub­lish­ers result­ing from this action, the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage will exam­ine its cur­rent peri­od­i­cal poli­cies and pro­grams to arrive at long-term solutions.”

Finally, the pro­gram eli­gi­bil­ity for the Gov­ern­ment of Canada’s new Children’s Fit­ness Tax Credit took effect on Jan­u­ary 1st. Ded­i­cated read­ers of the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts’ Bul­letins will recall that the CCA inter­vened on this front when the Expert Panel was hold­ing its con­sul­ta­tions this past autumn.

We remain dis­ap­pointed, how­ever, that with the excep­tion of some forms of dance activ­i­ties involv­ing car­dio­vas­cu­lar exer­cise, the par­ents of the many young Cana­di­ans involved in cul­ture activ­i­ties will not be eli­gi­ble for this mod­est tax break, which will amount to a $78.50 tax rebate for each appli­ca­tion meet­ing Rev­enue Canada’s cri­te­ria. It is esti­mated that the Children’s Fit­ness Tax Credit will cost $ 160 M in lost rev­enue per year to the fed­eral Trea­sury, almost the equiv­a­lent of the bud­get of the Canada Council.