Looking for answers: Alex Colville, "To Prince Edward Island" (1965). Copyright National Gallery of Canada.

Their jobs sound like an oxymoron in Canada’s present political climate; arts professionals earn about half the average national income per year, a large chunk of which comes from grants. That public funding is in danger since Stephen Harper made it perfectly clear he doesn’t consider the arts a priority. Given that the main agenda of his Conservative majority is to balance the budget, the Canada Council Canadian Conference of the Arts recently predicted cuts of “at least $175 million” to arts, culture and heritage. And two weeks ago, adding insult to the threat of injury, Sun TV attacked interpretive dancer Margie Gillis by distorting grant tallies in a ham-fisted effort to devalue the arts. In this state of worry and frustration, what can bring some sanity back to Canadian arts policy?

Jeff Melanson, currently co-CEO the National Ballet School, and soon to be president of The Banff Centre, made a provocative suggestion at a talk in late May hosted by the Literary Review of Canada: a new Massey Commission.

Canada’s “Magna Carta of arts and culture,” as the commission’s report was nicknamed, was released in 1951. The detailed document gave advice on the state of Canada’s arts, sciences, humanities, and media based on three premises:

1. Canadians should know as much as possible about their country’s culture, history and traditions
2. We have a national interest to encourage institutions that add to the richness of Canadian life
3. Federal agencies that promote these ends should be supported

With then University of Toronto Chancellor Vincent Massey at the reins, the commissioners were poised to spur government spending in the arts. But before I let you in on their recommendations, let’s set the stage with some juicy historical context.

History of the Massey Commission

Rewind 67 years. Canada was nearing the end of the Second World War, a key part of which was fought using propaganda. Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia needed to keep their populations confused and complacent; the U.S. and Canada wanted their citizens to buy liberty bonds and join the army. Information and creative expression were deployed against the masses.

Before the war, Canada’s government had no real investment in the arts. The turning point came when arts groups began calling on their government to support culture as a way of protecting democracy.

As a negative argument, stifling creativity is censorship’s equal. As a positive argument, the arts play a role in driving democracy through freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression. (Thank you section 2(b) of the Charter.) Citizens who think critically and express their ideas creatively are a basic part of any healthy democracy — they hold government accountable.

After the war was over, Canada’s government created the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts. Two years later, the commission produced a body of research and advice that blossomed into an independent institution by 1957. To this day, many artists still fiercely protect the Canada Council for the Arts as if their lives depended on it—which for some is pretty close to the truth.

The report’s key recommendation

Please direct your gaze to section 15 (XV) of the Massey report: “The Artist and The Writer.” Here you will find a time capsule detailing the state of such creative endeavors as music, theatre, ballet, painting, architecture, literature, and Aboriginal arts. It is, I think, a must-read for all artists — and any naysayers. It will remind them that Canada indeed has written policy that places high value in artistic work.

This section begins with the suggestion that the extent to which a nation supports its artists is a measure of how civilized it is. Just how civilized was Canada back then? The report quotes the Arts Council:

“No novelist, poet, short story writer, historian, biographer, or other writer of non-technical books can make even a modestly comfortable living by selling his [or her] work in Canada. No composer of music can live at all on what Canada pays him[/her] for his[/her] compositions. Apart from radio drama, no playwright, and only a few actors and producers, can live by working in the theatre in Canada. Few painters and sculptors, outside the fields of commercial art and teaching, can live by sale of their work in Canada.”

This raised a vital question for the commissioners: if artists were so undervalued that they could barely sustain themselves, how could they gain funding? It only made sense for taxpayers to chip in — to protect Canada’s democracy and “civilize” our apparent philistinism.

The commission urged the resurrection of the Canada Council as an arms-length body. It would boost not-for-profits, promote artists abroad, and dish out scholarships. The independence of this body was key. As Margie Gillis calmly pointed out in the midst of Sun TV’s sensationalism, the government does not fund Canadian artists directly; instead it endows funds to the Canada Council. The Council consists of no more than 11 respected artists and educators who hold their positions for no more than four years each. Grant recipients are selected through a fair and open process.

A new commission on the arts

Today many of the report’s recommendations are dated. For example, Massey’s posse tagged radio as a “new technology.” While it remains an important medium, radio has been swallowed alive by the web and social media. Artists have harnessed these newer mediums for creative projects, including this fabulous example.

But technology is far from the report’s only concern. As Tom Perlmutter, chair of the National Film Board of Canada, told the Toronto Star:

“What we need now is not one particular policy patchwork fix but the new Massey-Levesque for the 21st century. We need to rethink the fundamental conceptual framework that can give rise to the cultural policies that will serve us for the next 60 years.”

Whether it is updated or started again from scratch, this not-yet-conceived report should be the brainchild of Canadian artists. They should review those ever-important premises about promoting the historical and cultural richness of our country. They should reassess how creative minds are using technology. They should research how Canada’s cultural policies compare to those abroad. And, most importantly, they must underline the fundamental reason that Canadians support the arts financially: the health and vibrancy of our democracy.

Creative Commons photo by Flickr user Daniel Villar Onrubia.

The CRTC’s in the news again, this time for proposing that journalists can lie, as long as no one gets hurt.

Last week the CRTC asked the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council to review its ban of unedited version of the Dire Straits’ 1985 song “Money for Nothing.” The 25-year-old hit, which has since started climbing on iTunes, was banned from Canadian airwaves after a complaint over its use of the word “faggot.”

But days before Straitgate, the CRTC quietly published an amendment that would punish the broadcasting, through radio or television, of “any news that the licensee knows is false or misleading and that endangers or is likely to endanger the lives, health or safety of the public.”

The amendment would replace the current wording, that “a licensee shall not broadcast […] any false or misleading news.”

CRTC sources told the Toronto Star the amendments aim to clarify the regulation, as the current text is open to legal loopholes. The amendment also clarifies “obscene” material as either the “undue exploitation of sex” or a dominant sexual characteristic combined with “crime, horror, cruelty [and/or] violence.”

Tech law expert Michael Geist blogged about the proposal, pointing out one small weasel word: “and.” Once again, the amendment concerns the broadcasting of “any news that the licensee knows is false or misleading and that endangers or is likely to endanger the lives, health or safety of the public.”

“It would perfectly permissible for a broadcaster to air false or misleading news,” he wrote, “provided that it not endanger the lives, health or safety of the public.” Geist also noted how much closer the amendment puts us to U.S. regulations.

The proposal comes weeks before the expected launch of Sun TV News in March. The channel generated controversy last fall for its attempt at Category 1 status, making it a must-offer for digital and satellite providers. Critics dubbed the network “Fox News North,” noting references to the controversial right-wing broadcaster in its application.

Before its approval, the channel prompted a scandal implicating Margaret Atwood and eventually George Soros, a rumoured ousting of the head of the CRTC, and an actual resignation from the project head. Although Sun TV generated much unfounded hysteria, hints at Fox News North have been copious throughout the coverage of this proposal.

But not without reason. This month’s shooting spree in Tucson, Arizona made many Americans think twice about overheated political discourse, propagated by many mainstream outlets.

Minutes after news that congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords had been shot, a Palin PAC image of her district in crosshairs went viral, as did clips from enflamed talk radio pundits and savage television “debates.” To quote Pima County sheriff Clarence Dupnik:

“I think it’s time as a country that we need to do a little soul searching because I think it’s the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out, from the people in the radio business, and some people in the T.V. business […] it may be free speech but it does not come without consequences.”

Although many now draw a link to the suspected gunman’s mental health issues, that many Americans automatically thought of their violent news media is telling.

CRTC’s proposed change would make it okay for media to deliberately lie, as long as nobody’s hurt. The results could be ineffective at best. After harm takes place — an assassination, a stampede — it will be hard to find a solid link between one isolated news story and an event.

The reality is that social reaction to media coverage is often cumulative. According to agenda-setting theory, media can’t tell people what to think, but rather what to think about. Media shape the public psyche, not through individual reports but through larger thematic decisions about what merits coverage and how issues are framed.

The CRTC’s proposal is bad for journalism and democracy. Not only does it allow for lower-quality broadcasting, it could divert public attention from wide-ranging media issues by pigeonholing individual cases.

That our broadcast regulators would concern themselves more with public offence than public good is disconcerting. Critics left and right have decried the changes as dangerous for democracy.

If implemented, the changes would take effect in September. If you’d like to speak up, you have until February 9 to submit a complaint.