Mr. Speaker, at the beginning of the debate I was wondering why such a self-evident proposition as has been put forward in our motion would even need debate, but having heard the last two speakers I now realize why we need to do so.
As a former historian I would like to remind the House why we went into the cultural policies we have and then deal with the arguments presented, both by the parliamentary secretary for human resources and the member for Leeds--Grenville.
It is worth considering that the history of Canada was never a total accident. In fact, it was John Ralston Saul who reminds us that it was a “series of great strategic acts which have created Canada”, and those strategic acts extend to things like culture and broadcasting.
Some people have called these national projects the deliberate creation of a project that could not be done without all of society pulling together. Confederation would be such a national project. Other national projects would be the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, the creation of the CBC in the 1930s, and the way in which the country came together to fight in World War I and again in World War II to defeat the enemy. A series of great projects existed after the war, the great infrastructure projects of the 1950s, with the creation of the St. Lawrence Seaway, the building of the Trans-Canada Highway, the microwave system, medicare and, in recent times, the great national project of building a human rights regime in this country.
The great national cultural project after the second world war had several components to it. First there was what happened to public broadcasting with the coming of television in the 1950s and the way in which the government initially responded by creating a televised component on the CBC. We then had the Massey-Levesque report in the early 1950s in which the whole nature of Canadian culture was surveyed and two challenges were identified: first, how to preserve a Canadian culture in the face of American competition so close to us; and second, how to recognize the diversity of that culture, le caractère bilingue et biculturel?
Out of that came deliberate government policy in the late 1950s, specifically the creation of the Canada Council itself which helped to shape the cultural landscape we have today. It was not done by accident. It was not done by the marketplace. It recognized the market failures of both of those.
I was going to add two other components. There was the creation of the CRTC to regulate all broadcasting in this country and telephony. Then I would add 1967 as a year in which we deliberately as provinces and as a national government created many of the theatres and cultural spaces that we still enjoy today, including of course the National Arts Centre here in Ottawa.
Looking back on those heroic days we can say it has been a huge national success. Canadian content has flourished. Our popular music is flourishing, which was precisely possible because we created a space for Canadian artists on Canadian airwaves. It comes down now to such celebrations as the east coast music festival which will be known to many.
At the same time, it was important for serious music to be supported by the state, whether it was the creative act which the parliamentary secretary referred to as part of the UNESCO definition, which led to the support of composers like the late Harry Freedman, the late Harry Somers, John Weinsweig, and Alexina Louie, for example, but also the great artists who have been supported by the Canada Council over the years. I think of pianists like Louis Lortie and the tremendous singers who have been sponsored and supported by state sponsored organizations and cultural institutions, such as the great generation of singers we are enjoying these days from Isabel Bayrakdarian to Ben Heppner to Richard Marginson.
Theatre in this country has been enriched by the fact that there is a theatre section of the Canada Council. Theatres which exist in the ridings of most members present are not there by accident; they are there by an act of support. The symphony orchestras, the festivals, the ballets, the dance companies, the novelists who 40 years ago were not making their way internationally but now through support by the Canada Council are doing so. We are seeing the flourishing of the Cirque du Soleil which spawned its own theatre school.
There have been failures of course. We have had real challenges in the feature film industry outside of Quebec.
Here is the question: Do we need, as we propose, to continue to support Canadian culture and Canadian content as the motion suggests and do we need to continue to support public broadcasting and ownership rules and content rules for all the other broadcasters, or has the landscape sufficiently changed?
I would argue if I may divide that question in two that the great Canadian cultural institutions do need to continue. What does the Government of Canada do? It sponsors the great training facilities in this country like the National Theatre School in Montreal, the National Ballet School whose new building I happened to tour last Friday in Toronto, the Royal Conservatory of Music, the Banff School of Fine Arts. All of these are supported by the Government of Canada and without which we will not have the creativity called for in the UNESCO convention.
We need to support our other major cultural institutions, whether it is the theatre, the symphony, the opera, the ballet, the art galleries, the museums, the libraries because that is what civilized countries do. That is what happens in places like Europe which gives us the tremendous density of culture and the tremendous richness of urban life in those places. This is the price we pay, our taxation for civilization.
Canadian broadcasting is also something which will continue to need support in the face of the technological challenges which the members opposite have referred to. It is true that the Internet will be challenging, but I did not hear any answer about how that challenge would be met by the people opposite. We need to allow Canadians to find themselves wherever they are and in whatever medium. If we allow the law of private broadcasting to dominate, the law of the marketplace, we cannot guarantee that success.
We need not only a place for Canadian content but also a place for unusual, challenging, experimental, and indeed, unpopular broadcasting. That is why we have a public broadcaster. In short, we need a space for Canadians to breathe.
Canada is a country which was created on purpose and which needs to continue to be created deliberately. If we are going to continue to protect cultural diversity, to protect Canadian culture, we have to support this motion.
When I consider the arguments of the parliamentary secretary, which I find passing strange, the notion that somehow or other freedom is limited by this motion, I ask, which parts of this motion limit the freedom of Canadian artists to be supported by their government, limit the freedom to have air time on Canadian radio stations? I do not understand how it limits in any way the ability of those artists to perform their art outside the country.
The parliamentary secretary said that we cannot be protectionist, that we cannot protect. Again I ask her, how are Canadian artists hindered by this motion? What gets in their way because we happen to protect them and nurture them until they are in a position to strike out perhaps in a commercial fashion? What are the restrictions that she can allude to in detail and precision that really are hampering our Canadian artists?
She suggested and I quote, I think, “this motion will limit our ability to meet new realities”. How does that work? How does the nurturing and protection of Canadian artists limit their abilities in Canada or anywhere else?
The hon. member for Leeds—Grenville suggested that there was an incompatibility between the motion as presented and the new tax changes which have been brought in, in the latest budget, to encourage Canadian donors to be more generous with their stocks and be given favourable tax treatment in return. I would remind the hon. member that this was a policy which began with the Liberal government and which is not in any way inconsistent with the thrust of this motion.
I challenge the member for Leeds—Grenville to outline in detail how it is that this tax policy which encourages greater generosity on the part of Canadian donors is in any way constrained or restricted by Canadian content rules or foreign ownership rules. It simply encourages greater philanthropy. There is no connection. There is no decline of flexibility as he suggested.
The hon. member said that we cannot support things as they are, that we have to take a lead in new technologies. I would ask the hon. member to get precise information before we throw out the content rules and the ownership rules which deal with existing technologies. Before we throw the baby out with the bathwater, what exactly would we have to change? Until we know what that is, why would we not leave in place those things which have worked so successfully for us?
I would raise the same point when he talked about Canadian content on the Internet. He said that we need to change policy. Fine, we will change policy, but until we change policy why would we fail to protect the existing instruments which have served us so well over the last 40 or 50 years?
The motion in no way limits the ability to change in the future, but we do not wish to change without knowing exactly what we are changing to.
The same is true of the remarks he made on foreign ownership. He said that there is no flexibility. Once again, why would we not leave in place foreign ownership restrictions until we know exactly what the import of changes would be? What is it we would lose and what is it we would gain? No flexibility is impaired by this until those changes are proposed.
What I see in this motion is quite simply the fact that it is a rather, dare I say, conservative motion. It is a motion which says that before the government does something radical and before it changes things, it should tell us what those things are. Do not simply ask us to take it on faith and throw away the very policies which have nurtured both Canadian culture and Canadian broadcasting for the past 50 years and simply trust the government. No, we will not.