Thanks, Elliott. I'm delighted to be here today. Thank you very much.
Canada and Canadians were leaders in the global campaign that led to the adoption in 2005 of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. While the convention did not achieve the hoped-for goal of carving culture out of trade agreements, it does provide a basis for parties to take a new and collaborative approach to cultural relations.
Canada was the first country to ratify the convention, and every member of Mercosur has ratified it. We believe that Canada can, under the convention, maintain its flexibility to implement cultural policies while building a more robust cultural relationship between Canada and Mercosur, if we use it as the foundation for that relationship.
Let me just review quickly the key elements to this proposal.
If we use the convention as the legal basis for our relationship with the Mercosur countries on cultural issues, the convention would confirm that Canada, along with each member of the Mercosur group, would have the absolute right to support its own artists and cultural producers. One of the key objectives of the convention is:
to reaffirm the sovereign rights of States to maintain, adopt and implement policies and measures that they deem appropriate for the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions....
By confirming support for the convention, Canada and the Mercosur members would acknowledge that they each have the right to support their own artists and cultural producers in every sector and every medium and however the works might be distributed to consumers. This is a positive understanding of the broad scope of cultural policy-making and is not limited to current media. It would thus provide far more protection for Canada than even the most comprehensive exemption that we have negotiated in any of our trade agreements.
The convention does more than this and creates new opportunities. It calls on parties to develop more bilateral cultural co-operation agreements in every medium; it seeks to encourage international co-operation to promote cultural development; and it would be based on mutual respect, with the goal of providing greater access to diverse cultural expressions in each of the parties.
With this in mind, ACTRA recommends that the government convene a high-level meeting of leaders of the Canadian cultural sector to consider how to expand our bilateral cultural relationship with the countries of Mercosur. Transforming our mutual agreement around the convention into a legally binding text would provide a new basis for a cultural relationship between Canada and Mercosur while at the same time preserving our right to develop policies and measures that create new opportunities for Canadian producers and artists to export and tour.
Elliott.