Michael Geist slams Heritage, says its funding priorities are all wrong

An opinion piece in the Toronto Star by Michael Geist says that Canadian Heritage should shift its priorities. More funding should go into new media and emerging creator groups, he says, presumably at the expense of established programs. Geist is a well-known critic and commentator on copyright, digital and online issues. He is Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law.

(In his roundhouse swing, Geist never once mentions the predominance of small, specialty magazine publishers who make up the vast bulk of the publishing activity in this country. Once again, magazines get sideswiped in a controversy that is predominantly about other media.)

He said that the advent of a new heritage minister,Josée Verner, replacing Bev Oda, is an opportunity for major change.

A change in minister may not be enough, however. While Oda had her shortcomings, the reality may be that the problem lies less with the identity of the minister of Canadian Heritage and more with the department itself.

Few doubt the importance of the cultural sector from both an economic and social-policy perspective, yet that status is not reflected in the department of Canadian Heritage, which has gradually morphed primarily into a granting agency for various cultural initiatives (see "Culture").

Increased funding for festivals, films, museums and other culture industry programs may be worthwhile, however, the problem with the grant approach is that it has locked Canadian Heritage into the status quo at a time of dramatic change.

He notes that broadcasting got almost a quarter of a billion dillars, book publishing $35 million, the Canada Music Fund $19 million and the Canadian magazine industry $15 million. Most of this money, says Geist, goes to cultural industries rather than individual creators.

The beneficiaries of these funding programs are loath to see them change (other than to increase available funds), yet the modes of cultural production have changed dramatically in recent years. Digital technologies and the Internet have enabled thousands of individual creators to adopt alternative business models while producing quality content for distribution to a global audience. If Verner is to emerge as a strong advocate for Canadian culture, her starting point should be to face up to this new reality. Funding programs should be reviewed to ensure that they reflect the current environment and maximize the potential of Canadian creators, leading to a trade-off that matches stable long-term culture funding with programs that put creators ahead of distributors and marketers.

Moreover, Verner should beef up support for new media (which garners a tiny fraction of cultural funding) and grant equal airtime to emerging creator groups such as the Canadian Music Creators Coalition and Appropriation Arts, two coalitions that represent hundreds of Canadian musicians and visual artists.

He also slams the feds for not developing a digital strategy or taking a strong position on key issues like net neutrality.

For example, Canadian Heritage has been surprisingly silent on the Net neutrality issue, despite calls to preserve equal access to Canadian content from the Canadian Media Guild.

The same is true for policies on high-speed networks and competitive wireless pricing, the two key distribution systems of Canadian digital content that will have an enormous impact on the actual marketplace success of Canadian cultural funding.

Further, while European countries have launched major digitization initiatives geared at preserving and promoting their cultural heritage, Canada has failed to implement a national digitization strategy.