bout de papier, Vol. 10, No. 4 (1993) — Fall/Winter 1993 // Automne/Hiver 1993, pp. 33–34
Colin Robertson, President of PAFSO, and Peter Roberts, Senior Adviser to PAFSO, testified before the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance on February 25, 1992 on Bill C-93 which would have transferred the international cultural program of External Affairs to the Canada Council as part of a reorganization of the Canadian government. The Bill was subsequently defeated in the Senate.
Excerpt from the Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance, Tuesday, May 25, 1993
Mr. Colin Robertson, President, Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers:
La diplomatie moderne transcende nettement les relations classiques entre États. Elle est conditionnée par le magasinage transfrontalier, les échanges d’étudiants, la pêche au filet maillant, le maintien de la paix en Somalie et en Bosnie et les « échanges » sportifs, notamment la Série mondiale et les éliminatoires de la Ligue nationale de hockey.
La culture détermine l’identité nationale au pays comme à l’étranger. Expo 67 a représenté un moment magique pour la nation. Le moment le plus dramatique de l’histoire du sport au Canada a peut être été le but que Paul Henderson a compté à Moscou en 1972.
Pendant bien des années, le sport et la culture ont souvent été le seul lien concret entre l’est et l’ouest.
To spurn cultural diplomacy is to ignore an important tool of foreign policy and trade promotion. Let me give you an example from personal experience.
To underline our support for Hong Kong, two years ago our diplomatic mission led the organization of Festival Canada ’91. Opened by the Prime Minister, it consisted of over 45 events, including performances by cellist Ofra Harnoy, a festival of films as well as poetry readings, street buskers and pottery exhibitions. It also included appearances by dances from Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, supermarkets promoting Alberta beef and pasta from Ontario, and the inauguration of the new 747 Canadian Airlines International flights by Miss Canada, a native Canadian from Edmonton. Over 80 per cent of the funding for the festival came from the private sector.
Culture was used directly to promote our trade and political interests. During the next 16 months our trade increased significantly and Governor Patten has publicly stated that Hong Kong has no closer friend than Canada. The festival worked, not least because culture was used as a basic tool of foreign policy.
Canada has not been alone in entrusting the promotion of culture to its foreign ministry. Rather, we follow the example of most of our G-7 partners, including Britain, Germany, France and the United States. Nor are we alone in examining how best to promote culture abroad. Each has reached the same conclusion. Cultural diplomacy plays a crucial part in improving political and commercial relations with foreign countries.
Each year nearly 60,000 foreign students attend our schools and universities. About half are from Asia, the region with the greatest potential for economic growth and trade during the next two decades. It is estimated that foreign students inject more than $440 million annually into the Canadian economy. They give young Canadians an early exposure to the wider world. More importantly, today’s overseas student is tomorrow’s trade minister or captain of industry. When you knock on doors selling Canada Inc., these people-to-people linkages create the kind of competitive advantage that Canada needs.
Plutôt que d’essayer de prédire les effets des modifications proposées, je vais vous proposer des questions.
Premièrement, le Conseil des arts aura-t-il l’argent et le personnel nécessaires pour faire fonctionner le programme international? Le Conseil des Arts a été plus d’une fois victime de compressions draconiennes. Pourra-t-il préserver le programme culturel international? Au sein d’un organisme dont la vocation concerne essentiellement les affaires intérieures, quelle importance accordera-t-on au programme international? Le Conseil des arts créera-t-il un service international?
Si la culture n’est plus une des bases fondamentales de la politique étrangère, les missions à l’étranger vont-elles faire bien plus qu’un petit effort pour la forme?
Troisièmement, l’enseignement dispensé aux étudiants étrangers pourrait devenir l’un des volets les plus importants du secteur des services. À l’heure actuelle, les agents du Service extérieur s’occupent de promouvoir la question grâce à toute une série d’arrangements qui font partie d’un contexte plus vaste pour la politique étrangère, y compris Asie- Pacifique 2000, les Bourses de la francophonie, les Hautes Études commerciales en administration, le Commonwealth Fellowship, le programme Fullbright et le Programme d’Échanges Internationaux visant la jeunesse. Qui va administrer ces programmes maintenant?
Fifth, in the proposed bill, the Canada Council is to act as executing agent for international cultural relations. Yet, as an independent agency it is removed from government. The independence of the Canada Council was designed to meet domestic requirements. However, beyond our borders promoting culture has everything to do with Canadian foreign policy. The bill says the council is merely to “take into account consideration of the foreign policy of government.”
For example, if the government decides to put emphasis on Latin America because of NAFTA, of the new states in the former Soviet Union for reasons of peace and security, must the Canada Council carry through? In External Affairs, decisions were driven by foreign policy; in the Council they have a different priority. Who will have the final say?
Canada faces a world in which the emphasis on diplomacy is moving away from the narrow confines of the political chancery and the trade ministry and towards a more complex spread of contacts: commercial, educational, journalistic and cultural. Other countries understand this. Cultural diplomacy is best practised as part of the foreign ministry.
Mr. Peter Roberts, Senior Advisor, Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers:
The Canada Council, as originally conceived, was a unique institution in this country. It made and still makes its decisions about how to spend its money almost entirely through juries of artist peers or on the advice of panels made up of artists. The Council can, but very rarely does, overturn those jury decisions. The Canada Council is concerned about Canadian artists performing or exhibiting abroad. Its concern, however, has nothing to do with the foreign policy of the government of the day, but rather with the development of the artist. Is now the right time in the career of this painter to exhibit in New York? Is this the moment for this young pianist to perform in Wigmore Hall, or before a sophisticated Russian audience in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory? Should the Calgary Philharmonic be helped to tour Latin America now, or would it be more useful to them as an orchestra to go five years from now? The Department of External Affairs, whose decisions are made not by juries of private citizens but by ministers, has to know what it wants and must have the money to pay Canadian artists and scholars to fill the identified need. We would like a major Canadian orchestra to play in Beijing to improve our image there, to promote our grain sales, to make the Chinese more aware of Canada. Fine. Call up Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver and see if the orchestra is free and would like to go. But don’t pretend that what you are doing is developing the orchestra artistically. You may or may not be, but that is not your primary concern. For the Department of External Affairs to back out of international cultural affairs on the grounds that they are not basic, which is the word that is used, or for the Canada Council to become a minor foreign ministry on the grounds that the Department of External Affairs is too busy to do the job, will result in failure in both places. Which major country runs its foreign cultural policy out of an essentially domestic institution? None that I know of. I think we should not be the first to venture into this swamp.
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Originally published in / Publié à l’origine dans bout de papier, Vol. 10, No. 4 (1993) — Fall/Winter 1993 // Automne/Hiver 1993, pp. 33–34. Read the rest of this issue / Lire le reste de ce numéro →
