TORONTO – Non-profit corporation Media Access Canada is hosting a private roundtable of audio-visual associations, guilds and unions at the end of this month in Ottawa, to discuss ways of strengthening Canada’s broadcasting system, it announced Tuesday.
The roundtable will include sessions on the federal government’s just-announced consultation on foreign ownership, its ongoing digital consultation and the CRTC’s 2011 licence renewals of Canada’s major broadcasting ownership groups.
"The announcement earlier this week by Industry Minister Tony Clement of another important consultation that will directly affect Canada’s cultural businesses clearly shows that non-broadcasting stakeholders must identify new ways and means of strengthening the cultural industry and broadcasting in particular,” said Beverley Milligan, MAC’s acting president and CEO, in a press release.
“After all, cultural industries contribute strongly to our economy.” Milligan pointed out that in 2008, the Conference Board of Canada reported that the cultural sector made up 7.4% of Canada’s gross domestic product, and employed more than a million people directly and indirectly.
MAC is a not-for-profit corporation focused on research and analysis in the communications and cultural industries.
“Every major cultural organization has asked the CRTC to review its laissez-faire approach to our broadcasting system,” continued Milligan, “but the CRTC has focused instead on granting broadcasters’ every wish. It’s clear that if we want to strengthen our cultural industry, industry stakeholders need an innovative and effective approach.”
“Canada’s major non-broadcast stakeholders will gather in a private setting at the end of June,” reads the press release – which did not say where or when this gathering would take place (we at Cartt.ca would attend if invited, but we’d also want to report publicly on what was discussed, too).
“Invited speakers, including the keynote address, will discuss new approaches to effective participation by audio-visual stakeholders in policy making that affect Canada’s cultural industries,” continues the release.
“As host to the roundtable, MAC will provide participants with the empirical research needed for effective engagement for future submissions at a time when there is a significant lack of useful and relevant data from the CRTC.”
