Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Acadie—Bathurst.
I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to the motion. All members of the NDP will be supporting this motion, which deals with the ratification of the UNESCO treaty on the protection and promotion of diversity and of cultural expressions in Canada, an important convention.
However, the amendment put forward by the NDP member for Timmins—James Bay is the operative clause of the whole motion. It insists that the government also provide direction to trade negotiators to ensure that domestic cultural rights are not undermined in any trade talks. While we support the motion, the amendment, which directs our negotiators in terms of upcoming and ongoing trade talks, is very important.
I think a lot of Canadians may wonder what our Canadian culture, what we see on television, read in books and magazines and see in shows, has to do with trade talks. We do not think of culture as a commodity, as a tradable item. The reality is there is a very strong interface between cultural, telecom and broadcasting services. In fact, there have been very serious concerns about whether our cultural rights and sovereignty will be traded away as they become part of larger trade negotiations now taking place under GATS. Many fear this will become a reality. I reference a briefing paper from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. It states:
Culture is in need of protection in the trade negotiations because unrestricted competition in this arena would replace local and national cultural expression with powerful international media conglomerates....Culture and telecom are being treated very differently, as if they were distinct...This approach needs to be revisited, because in Canada these two sectors are rapidly merging and becoming inseparable. As a result, trade negotiations to promote more foreign involvement in the provision of telecom services, including foreign ownership, threaten our cultural expression.
We have the link between these two issues and how much our cultural sovereignty is now threatened by the negotiations under GATS. Therefore, the NDP amendment is very important if we are genuinely concerned about protecting and enhancing cultural identity in Canada.
This is a very broad area and it is something that we have spoken about a lot. However, over the last decade we have seen a significant erosion in Canadian culture in the institutions of public delivery and public funding. We have seen a significant erosion of Canadian ownership. There is always a looming threat of these massive conglomerates moving into Canada, commercializing our culture and Americanizing it. I think people are very fearful about the rapid pace at which this is taking place in Canada.
Much of this took place under the Liberal watch. I listened to the speeches of Liberal members who purported to protect Canadian cultural sovereignty. Yet it was under the Liberal government that so much was given away in terms of ownership and public funding.
People spoke today about the lockout at the CBC and the turmoil that our public broadcaster and those who worked for it went through. Why was that? For 13 years we had a Liberal government that did very little to protect those institutions by way of legislation to ensure Canadian content and ownership and most of all to ensure stable, long term funding.
Is it any wonder that we now are moving into a new crisis arena because our culture is being threatened in trade negotiations under GATS? The political talk is there, but we need to see strong institutions. We need to see the funding, the framework, the policies and regulations and the laws that will protect Canadian content.
I am proud to represent the riding of Vancouver East, which is home to many individual artists and community-based organizations. They give us the stories of our lives. They give us community expression and a vision of who we are. They speak to the experiences that we have both locally and nationally. These artists struggle to make a living. Many are working other jobs to support their creative endeavours and many are living below the poverty line. It breaks my heart to see individual artists and organizations surviving on so little. Yet they keep doing their work because they have a dedicated and strong commitment to Canadian artistic expression and our cultural sovereignty.
I not only want to see the motion approved, but I also want to see an environment where we respect the rights and dignity of individual artists and organizations. I want to see support for the call from the Canadian Arts Coalition for a $5 per capita increase for the funding of the arts in Canada. I want to see incentives for artists. They are jammed with enormous taxes on the little amount of income they receive. This is being done very well in the province of Quebec and we need to do it across the country.
I want to see long term stable funding for the CBC. Just a couple of days ago, a news advisory came out about the CBC's television design department being under threat of closure. Why is this happening when we are debating the UNESCO treaty and supposedly the idea that we support protecting and promoting the diversity of culture in Canada? Why would we close that department? It has had a long history of protecting and enhancing original programming in our country? This measly cost saving measure of $1 million will have a significant impact on original productions in Canada.
The debate today is important. If we are serious, we need to pass the motion. We also need to ensure that the amendment put forward by the NDP is adopted. We need to give clear direction to the trade negotiators, who are acting on behalf of Canada, to ensure that they do not negotiate away our cultural sovereignty as part of so-called competitiveness.
I am glad to support the motion today, but it is just a first step. We need to do much more to ensure that we support our artists, our cultural institutions and bilingualism in public broadcasting. We need to support organizations like the CBC to ensure they are not threatened each and every year by what the government plans on doing. Otherwise we will find ourselves in a void. We will find ourselves in a country which has lost its identity, its cultural expression and its voice. These issues are important in protecting our identity.