Good evening.
I'd like to start by thanking the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage for this opportunity to present on behalf of our members and the diverse communities we represent.
The Independent Media Arts Alliance is a national network of 84 non-profit independent film, video, and new media production, distribution, and presentation organizations representing over 12,000 artists and cultural workers across Canada. The IMAA is now 25 years old, and since the beginning has worked to improve the means and access for independent media artists at every stage, from funding to production, distribution, and exhibition.
First and foremost, I would like to underline the important role the CBC has as the primary cultural broadcasting institution for Canadian arts and culture. The CBC is an important place for the production and presentation of independent media artworks, in addition to being a primary source for the diffusion and promotion of our events and reporting on our activities. The CBC is key to audience and market development for the independent media arts sector.
I'm going to jump ahead here and talk a little bit about the Canada Council for the Arts, because a lot of our members rely on Canada Council funding to survive.
The Canada Council for the Arts receives approximately $150 million annually from the federal government that is then invested into artists and organizations that create and disseminate cutting-edge artworks that endeavour to reach a broad Canadian audience. It stands to reason that the federal government should invest in the promotion and diffusion of these works through our national public broadcaster.
Television programs such as Zed, and Socket, which aired last summer on CBC radio, featured young Canadian artmakers, and plugged listeners in to current cultural and aesthetic issues. Not only were these programs instrumental in building new audiences for our sector, they were interesting and, I found, really fun shows. Unfortunately these programs are no longer running.
The trend of cutting arts programming when the CBC faces funding challenges is short-sighted. We urge the federal government to acknowledge the long-term benefits of supporting programs that feature independent media arts by providing increased stable funding to the CBC.
We also feel that the CBC is not able to fulfill its cultural mandate with consistency within each region and within each artistic discipline. It is felt that the majority of arts programs focus on larger commercial productions. In some regions, the programming does reflect the media arts sector while in other regions it's next to impossible to get any reporting on our events. It is felt that the CBC would be far more successful at reaching its mandate if it were not so dependent on commercial revenue.
In certain regions, the CBC has been very proactive in getting involved with indigenous and diverse communities through training and development, sponsorships, joint programs, and the CBC website. For example, in Manitoba, CBC participates quite extensively in the first nations community. We would love to see that sort of initiative happening across Canada.
The CBC can go a long way towards promoting emerging artists, artists from diverse cultural backgrounds, and indigenous artists. The mandate of the CBC states that it sets out to “actively contribute to the flow and exchange of cultural expression” and to “reflect the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canada”. Increased funding would enable the CBC to address the specific needs of the indigenous communities across Canada. We feel strongly that the indigenous community should be consulted in that process.
In response to the inquiry about new media and its impact on public broadcasting, we feel there's tremendous potential in this area. The growth in media arts is rapid. More and more artists are working with new media. This is due to the popularity of media art as a form of audiovisual expression in today's culture.
Canada’s youth are exposed to and become familiar with the Internet, video, television, and other technologies long before most other forms of visual communication or artistic production. As a result, many young artists are moving to the media arts as their form of creative expression.
In addition, to access programming, more and more Canadians are turning to new platforms and new formats, such as the Internet, cellphones, and PDAs. This impacts how CBC is able to carry out its mandate. This new communications environment has different boundaries than those regulating the radio and television sector and enforced by the CRTC.
As a free marketplace environment, satellite, Internet, and mobile broadcasting have enabled private broadcasters to infiltrate these new platforms for which the increase in demand and range of options dominates over quality in programming. Given this, there's the risk that CBC's ability to fulfil its mandate is challenged by a move into a less-regulated new-media paradigm.
It will be the vital role of the federal government to fund these new media initiatives to ensure Canadian cultural content has a strong presence within these new formats.
A more diversified and broad-reaching set of technologies will also benefit Canadians. New communication networks should be viewed as tools that could help to bridge communities--for example, the indigenous communities in the north and the more southern populated regions of Canada.
New formats are presenting the potential for CBC to advance and further its mandate. The CBC will be able to target audiences on a regional, cultural, ethnic, or linguistic basis while building a national consciousness and identity that reflects our diverse society.
Some CBC programs maintain podcasts that must continue to be developed and available online. These initiatives not only reach new audiences within Canada, they bring Canadian content to the world.
Canada is one of the most technologically sophisticated countries, and we are in a position to be at the forefront of the digital media revolution, which would benefit Canadians. It also benefits artists, making possible many new economic models for production and marketing.
This being said, we would like to point out that there should be a mechanism in place to ensure that Canadian artists are being paid for the work that they show, no matter what format it's presented in.
In addition, it will be important to ensure that no matter which platforms are used, the content is available across Canada and most importantly to Canadians of all socio-economic backgrounds.
One of the strengths of CBC radio and television has been its ability to reach Canadians in all regions via the airwaves. The federal government should investigate ways to ensure means of and access to new media for all Canadians.
To conclude, federal funding permits the public broadcaster to present programming that is an alternative to that of the homogenized corporate broadcasters. A soundly funded public broadcaster provides our democratic system with a balance of perspective that must be reflected in the information that is publicly disseminated.
Thank you. I would be happy to answer any questions.