Ottawa vote-farmers have destroyed hope the country’s culture can ever flourish; the system has failed and we need to start over
Canada needs to go back to square one with a new age Massey Commission if its greatest stories are ever going to be told in a manner that will engage, inspire and mend a broken nation
The time has clearly come for Canadians to take a long look in the mirror and ask themselves if what they see reflected back at them is really what they want to see.
And no, this isn’t a knee-jerk reaction to the deep and disturbing divisions the war in Gaza has revealed about the new Canadian reality within a post-Judeo/Christian culture.
It’s about the nation’s fading cultural policies and institutions, their ineffectiveness, their wandering sense of mission and, quite possibly, their irrelevance. We might just have a collection of institutions designed for a past century - a Canada that no longer exists, not even in our younger generations’ memories. Anchorless, what is left of those designed to support the nation’s social aesthetic bobs upon an ocean of faddish ideas and political whims bereft of any clear sense of long-term mission.
The problem was most recently outlined by Sutherland House’s Kenneth Whyte when, in his Substack, the book publisher lamented the demise of Melanie Joly’s brief term as Heritage Minister.
The increasingly diminished Joly, many may recall, appeared to take a 21st Century approach to the 21st Century when she first came on the scene in 2016. She seemed aware that the advent of the internet had permanently changed the manner in which Canadians would be communicating with each other going forward. She spoke not of the threat that it posed to Canada’s creative classes but to the opportunities.
She sounded like she knew what she was talking about.
That was when this government, optimistic and young, spoke of real change and the endless possibilities of an “innovation agenda.” That was before it embraced the belief that, as O’Brien told Winston, the sole “purpose of power, is power.”
“She not only said the system was broken, but that it had been broken for a long time and she couldn’t understand why nothing had been done about it,” Whyte wrote. “Her solution was to shift the focus of our cultural policy from Canadian content quotas and other outmoded forms of protection to the promotion of Canada’s arts and culture to the rest of the world.
“In an age of global platforms, Canadian culture needed an outward-looking cultural strategy. The issue is how can the government be relevant today, instead of being left behind.”
Many of those who were working in cultural institutions (in my case the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)) under Joly’s watch found her view both refreshing and inspiring (something, it must be noted, that is rarely said about her performance as foreign affairs minister).
Alas, once the government discovered that the young minister’s dreams of a powerful and prosperous Canadian cultural industry taking on the world and winning were anathema to those embedded in the 20th Century’s protectionist approach, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau swiftly brought Joly’s tenure at Heritage to a close.
As has been the case since the turn of the century, the fear of upsetting a small but deeply influential core of Montreal-based creators overwhelmed any talk of progress.
Joly was shuffled out and, in her place, we were given Steven Guilbeault, Pablo Rodriguez and Pascale St-Onge whose missions were to pass and enact the Online Streaming Act, the disastrous Online News Act and otherwise maintain the status quo.
Meanwhile, in publishing:
“Federal support was supposed to foster a Canadian-owned book publishing sector yet led instead to one in which Canadian-owned publishers represent less than 5 percent of book sales in Canada,” according to Sutherland House’s Whyte.
Other examples - the CBC comes rather quickly to mind - abound. The National Film Board (NFB), for instance, funded Oscar nominee To Kill a Tiger. An excellent film about an important topic, it is directed by a Canadian, Nisha Pahuja, but otherwise has nothing to do with Canada.
If all we wish from our cultural institutions is that they effectively distribute funds to those employed in the nation’s creative sector, we should be honest about that.
But if we actually want, as the NFB’s original mandate stated, “to produce and distribute and to promote the production and distribution of films designed to interpret Canada to Canadians and to other nations,” in order to build and sustain a discernible culture, we need to talk.
We need to get everything on the table, from funding allocation for language (Heritage’s mandate letter calls for a 60/40 English-French split) to sense of mission.
We need to question every one of today’s accepted cultural verities and launch an equivalent to the Massey Commission of three-quarters of a century ago that held 114 public meetings in 16 cities and, in two years, built the foundation for today’s policies.
Otherwise, if we just want to come up with new ways to feed and water preferred stakeholders in broken systems, we will become increasingly uncomfortable with that which returns our gaze into the Canadian mirror.
(The rewrite is about media and, in this example, culture. Please hit the subscribe button and support independent thinking that keeps an eye on the nation’s media and those who control it)
Overall, Peter, I very much like your piece. Watch our: here comes the "however."
However, you mention the entrenched girls and boys (I will call them "EGB") and how they are - a tad - unenthusiastic about any change. It seems to me highly likely that any substantive attempt at change or merely at even mild questioning would result in the EGB bring down torrents of hell and brimstone on whatever government dared approach such an action. I further think that the absolute opposition within the bureaucracy would be enormous.
So.
In order to make such a move - and, I do believe it highly necessary - it will take a particularly fearless Prime Minister who has - and is willing to use mercilessly - a shiny new broadsword. It will further take a PM who makes it clear that the era of ministerial responsibility has returned and that that means that bureaucratic responsibility has also returned.
Given the incredible shape of this country today and given the absolute train wreck of an economy, military, health system, legal system, yada, yada, yada, which potential future PM is willing to provoke the chattering classes so?
I can only hope that our next PM is that person for all seasons, for all portfolios and is fearless - perhaps even somewhat foolish - but is someone who wants to do the RIGHT thing in all areas.
You can sign me,
Pollyanna
Great piece.