Canadian Heritage Minister Sheila Copps is travelling to Paris in the first week of February for a series of meetings aimed at advancing the international agenda for cultural diversity.

The diversity movement, launched by Copps in 1998 and spearheaded by the Canadian and French governments, is building support for an international treaty or convention enshrining national cultural rights outside the framework of WTO and FTAA trade in services agreements. The movement, which has parallel NGO and ministerial components, is also seeking to enshrine a new treaty or ‘instrument’ within an existing international body – possibly UNESCO, the UN organization responsible for educational, scientific and cultural matters.

In Paris, Copps will address 250 NGO delegates from 28 countries, plus an additional 100 observers and experts attending the Second International Meeting of Cultural Professional Organizations, Feb. 2-4. It is hosted by France’s Comite de Vigilance, made up of some 40 organizations. Eleven countries participated in the first NGO conference held in Montreal in September 2001 and hosted by Canada’s Coalition for Cultural Divsersity.

French President Jacques Chirac is scheduled to address the Paris conference Feb. 2.

Copps and French Minister of Culture Jean-Jacques Aillagon, co-chairs of a ministerial group known as the International Network for Cultural Policy (made up of 15 or 16 cultural and government ministers), are part of the INCP’s working group, which will meet with UNESCO director-general Koichiro Matsuura Feb 5-6.

Canadian coalition

‘The audiovisual sector is much more at risk right now than other sectors in WTO negotiations,’ says CAFDE president Richard Paradis. ‘We know that the Americans are asking, in bilateral agreements, that restrictions be placed on assistance to audiovisual sectors in different countries. They do not want any more programs or policies that will favor domestic product over access to markets.’

CAFDE is one of nine film and TV organizations in the CCD, including the APFTQ, CFTPA, CAB, ARRQ, DGC, AR SRC, SARTEC and WGC. Overall, the CCD is composed of some 30 professional organizations, including those from the music, book, performing and visual arts, and multidisciplinary sectors. The coalition’s co-chairs are Pierre Curzi, president, Union des Artistes, and Scott McIntyre, VP, Association of Canadian Publishers.

What’s at stake?

What is at stake, says the CCD, is the right of nations to defend their cultural industries, such as the right to implement policies and programs in support of content or language quotas in broadcasting, enact legislation granting financial assistance and tax-based measures limited to domestic producers and distributors, and the right to set foreign ownership restrictions.

The U.S. has taken the opposing position that content quotas in radio and TV place limits on its export capacity, or that U.S. firms are subject to discriminatory practices because of coproduction treaties and/or because they are denied access to national tax-incentive programs.

Copps and other INCP ministers met in Cape Town, SA in October 2002. This year’s annual meeting is slated for September in Croatia.

Destination UNESCO

In an interview with Playback, Copps said, ‘The discussions we’re having in Paris are in part about where we’ll house the new instrument, because we are not looking at creating a new international body but looking at working within existing institutions. Obviously, the key destination could possibly be UNESCO because of its interest in culture.’

Copps says if the international cultural instrument is housed within the UNESCO framework, it should nevertheless have some political clout and be directed by national cultural ministers, not bureaucrats.

‘One of the great strengths of WTO is that member countries undertake obligations that they can then deliver on. And we would like to see a council of ministers with power to implement decisions made at the INCP under the auspices of UNESCO. We don’t want it to just be a consultative body,’ she says.

Copps says Chirac’s presence is a ‘great boost’ to the diversity movement, noting he tabled the issue at the World Summit meeting on sustainable development in South Africa last fall.

And while the multilateral network for cultural diversity continues to gain momentum, with China slated to host the annual INPC meeting in 2004, Copps says the network ‘really needs to have some substance in law, and that is what we are looking at [in Paris].’

Copps says one of the network’s primary activities has been to advise countries not to undertake ‘any short-term decisions that could be irrevocably wrong for culture in their countries,’ or jeopardize their ability to enact cultural policy in the future.

Robert Pilon, EVP of the CCD, says this month’s Paris conference is timely because countries have to table ‘initial offers of liberalization’ in WTO trade services negotiations by March 31, 2003.

‘There’s a new push by some countries, mainly the Americans, to [have] other countries make commitments [technically called liberalization offers] and put culture on the [negotiating] table. Culture doesn’t belong there, and neither do education and health, by the way,’ says Pilon.

-www.cdc-ccd.org