OTTAWA – It’s been argued that Canadian cultural content won’t earn greater success unless it’s gets seen by a wider, and global, audience. The federal government believes that and is working on such strategy. Melanie Joly, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, highlighted some efforts that could bear fruit in the near future at an Ottawa conference on Thursday.
In a Q&A style appearance at the Canadian Media Producers Association’s (CMPA) annual Prime Time in Ottawa event, she noted that money from Budget 2016 is already being used to open up doors for Canada’s cultural and creative industries. Last February, the government allocated $35 million over two years to develop an export strategy for Canadian cultural content and early strides are being made. This money is part of a larger $1.9 billion investment over five years in arts and culture in the country, something the Minister references nearly every time she speaks publicly.
Joly was vague though with respect to the timing of this strategy, saying “we have been moving on this and in the next weeks, in 2017 for sure I’ll be announcing our cultural export strategy.”
But there have some successes to date, she told CMPA president Reynolds Mastin.
The first came in China where a couple of weeks ago, the government was able to establish ties for Canadian creative companies to enter that market. An expert advisory panel, consisting of representatives from the likes of Cirque du soleil, IMAX, Sheridan College, Canadian executives working for Walt Disney and others, was created.
“That is the first step to do commercial cultural missions, and we would like to do that in other key markets as well,” said Joly. “I also think that our sector is mature enough that we can really export quality content and therefore I believe that we can have these trade missions but for creative industries only.”
Stressing how important Canada’s cultural and creative industries are to the Canadian economy, she said cultural diversity on digital platforms was a topic of discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last month. As well, there will be other international fora in the coming months in which Canada will continue to raise the importance of culture on digital platforms, she said.
Closer to home, the Heritage minister is also attempting to create some synergies with federal government departments where cultural policy is considered. This includes the Department of International Trade and Industry, Science and Economic Development (ISED).
Joly said she is working with ISED minister Navdeep Bains to ensure that “creative industries are at the core of the innovation agenda.” She added that similar talks are ongoing with International Trade, all with the goal of making it easier for the industry to deal with government.
“It should be seamless for people in your position to deal with government when it comes to creative industries. It should be easy and therefore it shouldn’t be siloed like we are organized,” Joly told the group of producers and broadcasters..
While the minister provided a little bit of insight as to what the federal government is doing on the export file, she offered little new on the cultural policy front. All she said was that the government needed to balance the social and economic impacts and that the framework resulting from her 2016 Digital Cancon consultations would be released in 2017.
Asked by Mastin how the minister felt about recent research suggesting Canadians are on side with having over the top providers like Netflix and ISPs contribute to the production of Canadian content (as long as they don’t see it reflected on their bills…), she said it’s a legitimate reaction, adding that the government is studying all scenarios.
It’s important to remember, Joly added, that “Canadians are anxious towards their cost of living. And they are anxious about the cost of their telecommunications services, and their broadcasting services. And so we have to bear that in mind.”
