10:00am
It’s a beautiful sunny day in Ottawa today – perfect for a little arts advocacy activity on Parliament Hill. Just over an hour ago, 100+ members of the Canadian Arts Coalition from across the country headed out to meet with 120 MP’s, Senators, political officials, and Cabinet Ministers. We gathered before dawn this morning at the National Arts Centre for a breakfast briefing on the task at hand. Will Stuart and Jaqueline Larocque of Ensight Canada, the Coalition’s contracted government relations firm, walked us through our key messages and gave us some helpful tips and instructions for how to approach our meetings. Find our case online at www.canadianartscoalition.ca. We were organized into trios, with each team scheduled to attend 3-4 meetings throughout today. I still haven’t figured out how, exactly, this complicated meeting-organizing algorithm is applied but somehow it all works out. Some meetings began as early as 9am. As for me, I’m having a leisurely coffee before my first meeting at 12:15 with Heritage Minister James Moore. Wish me luck! I am energized and hopeful that these meetings will help the arts sector strengthen our relationships across all political parties and advance our common goals. More to come…
National Arts Centre
Canadian Arts Coalition Co-Chairs Katherine Carleton and Eric Dubeau
Arts Day participants
Heading to the Hill
Katherine Carleton et moi
Off to more meetings
1:00pm
The Coalition Steering Committee, consisting of Co-Chairs Katherine Carleton and Eric Dubeau, Sarah Iley, Melissa Gruber, Bastien Gilbert and I just met with Heritage Minister James Moore and his policy staff. We were thrilled at his positive reaction to our efforts to coordinate the sector from all parts of the country around key messages and he commended us for the way in which we created the conditions for a constructive dialogue between the sector and government, moving past the tensions that surrounded the 2008 election. On the list of discussion topics was how to sustain key investments in the arts, given the Government’s ‘DRAP’ – the Deficit Reduction Action Plan, intended to eliminate the deficit by 2014 through a strategic and operating review that would ask all departments and government agencies to offer up both 5 and 10% spending reduction scenarios for consideration by Treasury Board. In order to eliminate the deficit by 2014, a 5% savings must be found across Government, though some Departments will have to offer up more than 5% and equally, others may contribute less. The Minister assured us that the intention of this exercise was not to ‘cut’ unnecessarily, but to find savings that will have the least direct impact on artists and the stability of the arts ecology. The $2.9 billion budget of the Department of Canadian Heritage and its agencies (including Canada Council, the CBC, and others) will not be exempt from this process, though Moore reassured us that they are approaching this exercise, as he put it “with stilettos rather than hatchets”. He recognized the importance of the consensus issues we brought forward and reaffirmed the ways in which he has championed the culture file to his caucus. Then we took a group photo.
Melissa Gruber, Katherine Carleton, me, Bastien Gilbert, Minister James Moore, Sarah Iley and Eric Dubeau
3:30pm
My last meeting with Deputy Heritage Minister Daniel Jean took much of the same tone as the meeting with Moore, though Jean was even more straightforward about the need for all departments to contribute to reducing the deficit. He stressed that culture, overall, won’t be an exception though he encouraged us to measure our success by the degree to which our priority areas are affected. Less than a 5% reduction to the budget of the Canada Council, for example, would mean that the Council fared better than average and was seen by Government as a priority area. Spending reductions of any kind are hard to absorb in the cultural sector as it seems we’re known for doing more with less all the time. But understanding the bigger picture is indeed key to assessing the Government’s attitude toward cultural investment. I am now en route to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s office to meet with his Policy Advisor Andrew Rankin (not related to the Rankin Family or in any way connected to the east coast).
Signing in at the offices of the Department of Canadian Heritage in Gatineau
5:00pm
The meeting with Andrew Rankin at the Department of Finance was insightful. He himself was deeply involved in the arts growing up and seemed to inherently understand the importance of the arts to people’s lives and communities. He spoke openly of Minister Flaherty’s support of arts and culture issues and reported that he, alongside Minister Moore, is a major champion for us in the Conservative Caucus and in Cabinet. As we discussed our priorities and objectives, he encouraged us to respond more, as a sector, to positive policy initiatives that the government undertakes as this helps them gauge policy effectiveness. He commented that the sector is very vocal when we aren’t supportive of policy decisions, though much less vocal when we are. Now off to the ‘cinq a sept’ in the Speaker’s Chambers.
Micheline McKay and Erica Beatty
9:00pm
At the Ottawa airport now, waiting for Porter to whisk me home. The closing Arts Day reception, hosted by Deputy Speaker Denise Savoie, was a spirited event full of happy Coalition members and MP’s from all parties including Parliamentary Secretary for Heritage, Paul Calandra; Minister of National Revenue, Gail Shea; NDP Heritage Critic, Tyrone Benskin; Liberal Heritage Critic, Scott Simms and other art supporting MPs such as Charlie Angus and Justin Trudeau. Minister Moore made a surprise appearance and addressed the group with sincere support and gratitude for our efforts today. He encouraged us to continue working together and saluted MP’s from all parties who participated. “Supporting culture isn’t a left wing issue or a right wing issue, it’s the right thing to do”. Canadian actress Cynthia Dale also spoke, reminding us of the amazing work that artists do for Canada at home and abroad. She said, “We are an arts nation who create, perform and bring Canada to the world”. By all accounts, Arts Day 2011 was a great success and I’m so proud of all of the work done by the Coalition Steering Committee and its members. And most of all, I’m encouraged by the connections we made, and the relationships we built because it is the strength of this work that will help the sector move forward with strong support from our elected officials.
Signing off from Gate 26.
Reception in the Speaker's Lounge, Centre Block
Nathalie Fave and Stephanie Ballard
Justin Trudeau et moi
Minister Moore, Eric Coates and Micheline McKay
moi et monsieur le Ministre
Katherine Carleton, Eric Dubeau and Deputy Speaker Denise Savoie
Minister Moore and Cynthia Dale
NDP Heritage Critic Tyrone Benskin et moi
Leaving Centre Block
[...] Comments « The Arts Policy Diaries: Arts Day Live Blog [...]
Great blog Shannon. Thanks to all the MPs and Senators who shared their thoughts with us yesterday. Especially those who joined us afterwards for Deputy Speaker Savoie’s reception. And a really big thanks to the volunteer leaders of the coalition who herd all us ‘cats’ on a shoestring budget.
Hi Shannon, thanks for the blog postings. As an Arts Day on the Hill participant, you get very caught up in the meeting logistics. In the moment, it can be hard to focus on why we were there.
It was great, even only two days later, to read how much of a positive impact our efforts can have.
Hats off to the Canadian Arts Coalition and, if I may be so bold, to all the participants from my own organization Professional Association of Canadian Theatres.
Lucy
Thanks for Liveblogging this Shannon.
You are a true 21st Century Champion of the arts. I often recommend your blog as one of the most important in the Canadian arts scene.
As a non-committee member, I wanted to offer some frank thoughts to some of the comments that came up in your meetings.
First of all – it is impossible to celebrate, or even legitimize a 5% cut to the arts, or any other social program, while our government spend billions on a crime bill that even Texas thinks is crazy, $30 Billion more on fighter jets that don’t even work in the arctic, and lowers corporate tax rates at a time when the country could desperately use the revenue. These moves are all part of the our government’s plan to make our society more mean-spirited and militarized, while shifting costs away from the 1% of the wealthiest Canadian and on to the backs of the rapidly shrinking middle class and working poor.
Now that that is out of the way.
I found the comments from Finance’s Andrew Rankin….shall I say unnecessarily prescriptive? They can be translated as “Stop complaining and start celebrating our initiatives”. The problem is, their initiatives are worth frank discussion. Cutting SummerWorks, shifting Heritage funding to celebrate acts of war, cutting touring programs, funding totally BS festivals like the Walk of Fame Festival (Has ANYONE ever heard of this festival before?). It all adds up to bumbling, ideologically driven, poor public policy.
I also had a question about independent art and artists and the degree to which their needs are on the radar of this government. We have ushered in a new era where funding goes to major institutions who agree to “play ball” and thus can be controlled through access to this funding. Meanwhile the core generators of the cultural ecosystem, independent voices that are more difficult to be silenced, will continue to be starved of access to funding. Then later they will say, “But we increased arts funding!”, when in actuality they have just increased funding to organizations who will agree to be a sympathetic mouthpiece, or at least an uncritical one.
Maybe I’m wrong. In fact I would LOVE to be proven wrong, but this increased arts funding to safe, sometimes historical, certainly uncritical art forms, seems to be a new paradigm for arts funding at the federal level.
Please don’t take this comment to be unappreciative of your efforts or those of any of the other volunteers who made it to Ottawa because they are passionate about the arts in Canada. I’m sure this day was very important for our collective future. As someone who isn’t in charge of facilitating this relationship, I just felt the need to rep all the little guys and gals who make up the fabric of the cultural sector and might not be able to make the trip to Ottawa.
With admiration and respect,
Michael Wheeler
Co-Artistic Director
Praxis Theatre
[...] arts advocate and blogger Shannon Litzenberger live-blogged the meetings she went to including meetings with highly placed officials from Finance and the Minister himself. From each of [...]
“he commended us for the way in which we created the conditions for a constructive dialogue between the sector and government, moving past the tensions that surrounded the 2008 election.”
Congratulatios Shannon. That’s a remarkable achievement given the factors that lie behind us and more than likely ahead of us.
Also thought the Finance Minister’s comment was interesting:
“he encouraged us to respond more, as a sector, to positive policy initiatives that the government undertakes as this helps them gauge policy effectiveness. He commented that the sector is very vocal when we aren’t supportive of policy decisions, though much less vocal when we are.”
It’s true – we do get very loud and very angry when thing get cut and go wrong. And really, who can blame us when it seems our livelihood is continually being cut and questioned? What has been my question for a long time (and you and I have discussed this) – our advocacy needs must start and be maintained throughout the process, not just be a “sign-and-shout” effort when things start to go wrong. (Imagine if there had been money for a cultural lobbyist since the creation of the Canada Council?)
I’m struck my a comparison I read in a textbook in theatre school, I think it was “On Directing” – the recommendation was to encourage and accept an actor’s ideas, no matter how wrong they might be for the piece simply because it is through this encouragement that you get more ideas from them that are better. Positive reinforcement, improves the work.. Perhaps we should be treating the Conservative government as we try to treat our artists.
Thanks for the hard work!
[...] meetings was a challenge given my slightly frenetic meeting schedule. However, I’ve updated yesterday’s blog with play-by-play updates and photos so please take a [...]