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Chapter 20 | William D. Coleman (continued) 4. encouraging culture: the role of governments Over the past half century, beginning perhaps with the recommendations of the Lévesque-Massey Royal Commission on the Development of the Arts, Letters and Sciences in Canada, the government of Canada has sought to put in place programmes of support for such varied forms of cultural creation as film, television, literature and poetry, magazine publishing, theatre, and the fine arts. In Québec, similar support became increasingly systematic after the creation of the Ministère des Affaires culturelles in Québec after the Parti libéral du Québec came to power in June 1960. Since these early days of the Quiet Revolution, the Gouvernement du Québec has remained quite active in supporting and promoting cultural development in Québec. With the growing commodification of culture and its integration into mass consumerist culture, however, these kinds of programs have come under external pressure. As cultural production comes under the “discipline” of regional trading regimes like the NAFTA or of the world trading system under the WTO and its compulsory disputes settlement mechanism, government programs have been challenged as providing discriminatory subsidies. Perhaps the most notable example is the striking down of successive attempts by the Government of Canada to support the Canadian magazine industry (Armstrong, 2000). It is increasingly clear that large transnational cultural corporations will use regional and global trading rules to force open markets to their products and to challenge the efforts of governments of smaller societies to save part of those markets for their domestic artists. The market logic has also penetrated these smaller societies in that public corporations like the CBC/SRC and the National Film Board work increasingly in partnership with private sector cultural firms. The market logic tends to dominate ever more in these partnerships. Do these developments mean that governments are increasingly powerless in smaller states to support cultural creativity and cultural development? The various talks given at the colloquium would suggest not. 1. Governments can clearly continue many of the programs of support offered through such agencies as the Canada Council. Attention must be given, however, to the relative openness of these support programs to members of aboriginal communities and of the growing number of transnational, immigrant communities found in our major cities. 2. Second, it is important to recognize the potential role of contemporary information and communication technologies for cultural development. They are not only shaping identities, but also providing opportunities for cultural creation and the diffusion of cultural products in new ways. We have already noted the growing significance of cities and towns as supporters of cultural development. In recognition of such developments, many emphasize the need for democratizing much further access to Internet facilities and for government supporting vigorously the widespread installation in Canada of broadband capability. Such infrastructural support by governments would seem key to successful efforts by smaller societies like Québec and Canada to keep cultural creativity flourishing. 3. Finally, international and regional trading rules have nothing to say about educating and training the artists needed for cultural vitality. In the realm of economic and industrial policy, many of the smaller European states have reacted to the disciplines of trading rules by changing policies. Rather than protecting their industries through the use of tariffs, import quotas, and export subsidies, they have turned to re-educating and training workers. In seeking to develop a highly trained work force, they have hoped to increase their productivity and competitiveness in world markets. Perhaps Canada and Québec can take a lesson from this experience. The education and training of persons in the fine arts, in creative writing, and in the use of new multimedia technologies would seem to be crucial to the future of cultural creativity. In putting an increased focus on this aspect of education, questions should also be raised about the practices of some provinces like Ontario that are reducing, if not removing, fine art and music from elementary and secondary school curriculums. Such actions would seem short-sighted and hardly conducive to artistic creativity. If we wish to have creative cultural works in our smaller societies, we cannot expect it to flourish on barren ground. The soil for creativity must be nourished from the very earliest days of the education of our children. references
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