Thank you, Chair, vice-chairs, and members of the committee. My name is Elliott Anderson, director of public policy and communications for ACTRA, representing 25,000 performers in English-language media, including particularly for this presentation film and television.
With me is Garry Neil, who is our policy adviser and a global expert on how trade agreements can affect cultural policy-making.
I'll give some background, and Mr. Neil will talk about ACTRA's proposal for a new, innovative, and progressive approach to culture in the proposed free trade agreement with Mercosur. This is an approach that's based on our mutual support for the UNESCO Convention for the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.
I want to start by noting that for more than 30 years ACTRA has been at the forefront of campaigns to exempt cultural industries from Canada's trade and investment agreements, and for 30 years our governments have listened and our trade negotiators have succeeded in exempting culture. However, these exemptions are far from perfect, and Canada's most recent agreement, the CPTPP, contains provisions that we believe will restrict our cultural policy-making space.
The original trans-Pacific partnership agreement would have been a disaster for Canadian culture. Fortunately, the current government took some steps to address it via side letters with participating nations and changes to the preamble. These are positive steps, but they do not completely solve the fundamental problems of the TPP, which we have outlined in our written submission.
ACTRA believes it is time to take a new approach to culture and trade agreements. It would be based not on a negative exemption approach but on a positive commitment to promote diversity of cultural expressions, cultural collaboration, and exchanges.
I'll ask Garry to explain the proposal.