NEW HERITAGE MINISTER INHERITS A FULL PLATE Val Ross – Globe and Mail When Josée Verner, 47, was named yesterday as Canada's latest Minister of Canadian Heritage, she inherited rocky and contested terrain. While many red-meat Conservatives, especially from Stephen Harper's Alberta heartland, want to see culture turned over to the market, polls show that plenty of voters in Quebec and urban Canada still like the idea of federal support for the CBC, museums, ballet tours and galleries.
In contrast to Bev Oda, her stolid predecessor, Verner is telegenic. A former Quebec provincial Liberal, then involved with the Action Démocratique du Québec, she has, since last year, been Minister of International Co-operation and Minister for La Francophonie and Official Languages.
Verner's file is bulging with priorities. Oda made two major commitments when she came into the job in February, 2006: a CBC mandate review, and a long-overdue update of copyright legislation. She accomplished neither.
CBC is now an even hotter issue. The search is on to replace president and chief executive officer Robert Rabinovitch, due to step down later this year, and to fill two of CBC's top news and current-affairs jobs. (As The Globe and Mail reported last week, Egon Zehnder International, the headhunting firm working on filling these latter positions, defines them in strange terms. The jobs involve "a significant shift in decentralizing decision rights ... and [organizing] a reallocation of resources to support these changes" -- which sounds as if someone high up already has the CBC's new mandate all mapped out.)
Copyright reform is also pressing, thanks to strident American complaints. Canada is seen as such a haven for pirates of video games, movies and music recordings, the U.S. Trade Representative has put Canada with China on its "watch list." Washington wants Canada's new laws to mirror U.S. copyright.
"But the Washington legislation doesn't work, and that's from some of the guys who designed it," says NDP heritage critic Charlie Angus. "It leaves it to the courts to sue 14-year-olds for downloading Avril Lavigne. That's like King Canute forbidding the tide to wash over his feet. The real issue is, how in the 21st century can we monetize peer-to-peer sharing?"
Developing mechanisms to do that is a priority for the new minister, Angus says. It will be tricky. Canada's 16,000 visual artists seek steadier and bigger payments for use of their works in art galleries. Art galleries, already short of money, say they can't bear the extra cost. Universities are stuck on both sides of the debate. They want to encourage research and protect their staffers' intellectual property rights.
Says Alain Pineau, national director of the Canadian Conference of the Arts, the country's largest cultural lobby group: "Until we get legislation, we don't know where we're heading in the digital age."
The CCA wants to see the Canadian Television Fund on the new minister's agenda. The CTF is under pressure from broadcasters to broaden its definition of Canadian content. Cable giants Vidéotron and Shaw Communications tried to opt out of the programming fund that helps finance Canadian shows such as Little Mosque on the Prairie, but were told by the courts they could not. Still, they won't stop pushing for a more lax and commercial definition.
As well, Pineau says, the new Heritage Minister must "sort out the $30-million festival money mess." The March, 2007, budget pledged $30-million a year for two years to support festivals left scrambling after the withdrawal of tobacco funding and Gomery "sponsorgate" money. It was assumed the $30-million would be rushed into their needy hands, because 80 per cent of Canada's festivals take place in the spring and summer. Instead, festivals were told to cool their heels while Heritage figured out what the fund's application criteria actually are.
But their angst pales beside that of Canada's 2,500 small and regional museums, which have waited more than three decades for a beefed-up funding program to help them repair their buildings and upgrade their exhibitions. Instead, last year, the feds cut $4.6-million to the Museums Assistance Program.
True, the government has given money for specific museums and galleries in ad hoc spurts. But the Portrait Gallery of Canada is still in limbo. And in a year that has seen a fire at the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon and a roof collapse at the Prairie Art Gallery in Grande Prairie, Alta., the need for a predictable, well-funded process is urgent. Says Pineau: "Haphazard measures - some of which are welcome - have happened without rhyme or reason. Especially going into an election, we need to know what the Conservatives stand for."
The Heritage Minister's job is less about money, however, than about political leverage. Oda's job was made more difficult by the Prime Minister's habit of announcing key decisions himself (funding the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, for example) and of going over his cabinet colleagues' heads to block others (Harper is said to have removed from the last budget money earmarked to finish Toronto cultural projects).
What arts communities want above all is that the new minister will be strong, an advocate and a communicator.
"We need to feel that culture is a priority in cabinet," says April Britski, national executive director of Canadian Artists Representation. |