Source: Canadian Conference of the Arts

Dear friends and colleagues,

It is with great sad­ness that the Board of Gov­er­nors of the CCA came to the con­clu­sion last week that we have to shut down oper­a­tions imme­di­ately. I can tell you that the deci­sion announced today, while not a sur­prise given the known chal­lenges we were fac­ing, was most dif­fi­cult to take.

Since hear­ing in mid-April of the Harper government’s deci­sion to deny us the two year tran­si­tion fund­ing we had requested, the staff has been work­ing tire­lessly to see if there was a chance we could pull through based on the six months of sup­port received from Cana­dian Her­itage. Early signs were pos­i­tive beyond our expec­ta­tions. The response to mem­ber­ship renewals was most encour­ag­ing: in just over three months, we col­lected half of our increased tar­get ($100K) for the year. A num­ber of new orga­ni­za­tions joined, more than a dozen increased their con­tri­bu­tion to reflect their bud­gets, and oth­ers indi­cated clearly that they were ready to con­tribute sub­stan­tially more. We were devel­op­ing a vari­ety of strate­gies for a mem­ber­ship drive, like the one launched by the Edmon­ton Arts Coun­cil on our behalf. Through our Founders’ Cir­cle ini­tia­tive, we had found suf­fi­cient fund­ing to see us through to next March, and we were work­ing on projects that cre­ated real interest.

But a sober assess­ment of our prospects for 2013–14 led us to the sad con­clu­sion that despite our best efforts, we could not do in six months what we had told the gov­ern­ment would take a min­i­mum of two years to put in place. Time was not on our side to keep oper­a­tions going as we tried to restruc­ture, and we resolved that it would be irre­spon­si­ble on our part to accept fund­ing, pri­vate and pub­lic, under such circumstances.

As you will see in this sum­mary, the CCA has played a cru­cial role over the past 67 years in the devel­op­ment of the Cana­dian cul­tural sec­tor and of fed­eral cul­tural poli­cies. The CCA was and remains the largest alliance that brings the whole Cana­dian arts, cul­ture and her­itage sec­tor together. It alone pro­vides a national forum where issues of com­mon inter­est can be dis­cussed and pur­sued. This is why it must not dis­ap­pear altogether.

Over the past sev­eral months, we have con­firmed in a nation-wide con­sul­ta­tion and through the sup­port of a large num­ber of you that the need for this unique com­mon instru­ment is greater now than ever. Many of you have told us over the past sev­eral months that if we did not have the CCA, we would have to invent it. In order to facil­i­tate this to the full extent of our capac­ity, we are tak­ing mea­sures to put the orga­ni­za­tion in a state of sus­pen­sion, putting in place a care­taker Board charged with pre­serv­ing our incor­po­ra­tion and our char­i­ta­ble sta­tus. You will find in our National Director’s blog more details about how we leave the orga­ni­za­tion. We look for­ward to the day when a new group of stake­hold­ers picks up the torch to revive the CCA as a unique observer and inde­pen­dent voice for Cana­dian cul­ture at the national level.

In clos­ing, I want to express my grat­i­tude to my col­leagues on the Board for their gen­er­ous com­mit­ment to the orga­ni­za­tion over the past years. And my warmest thanks to the staff of the CCA who, through­out what was a very dif­fi­cult and chal­leng­ing period, showed excep­tional loy­alty, ded­i­ca­tion to the orga­ni­za­tion and quiet cre­ativ­ity in both approach and style.

We leave proud both of the efforts made and of the rich legacy of the CCA. Let us hope that this is just a tem­po­rary hia­tus and that a new revi­tal­ized CCA will spring up from the seed we leave behind.

Kath­leen Sharpe

© Canadian Conference of the Arts