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AE

OTTAWA — Announcing a Tory government
inspired hatchet job of sweeping dimensions, CBC
president Pierre Juneau told Canadians that the
CBC will eliminate 1,150 jobs starting April 1, 1985
as part of budget cuts totalling $75-million.

- Although 400 of these jobs will be eliminated by
‘‘attrition’’ and early retirement programs, about
750 CBC employees can look forward to receiving
their pink slips.

Hardest hit will be production centres in Toron-

to, Montreal and Ottawa, as the CBC can be .

expected to cut almost one in 10 of its 12,000
employees.

‘Radio and TV programming will be chopped by
$15.5-million. What this means is that CBC’s plans
to increase Canadian drama content by four hours
a week to fight the flood of American prime-time
broadcasting will go up in smoke.

Juneau’s announcement came as no surprise to
anyone, as the Tory government over the last few
months has made arrogant assaults against the ac-
tive Canadian cultural artistic community and the
Canadian public coast to coast.

In a statement prior to the CBC announcement
and covering the entire cultural spectrum, the
Central Cultural Commission of the Communist
Party of Canada condemned the hefty budget cuts
to the CBC, National Film Board, CRTC, Canada
Council and National Arts Centre. -

** As the cuts filter down through the provinces,”
the CPC said, ‘‘the theatre, dance, music and other
arts groups will be starved or killed off. New writ-
ers will be cut down. Young graphic or fine artists
will be told to get-lost.”’

Echoing this sentiment, the noted Canadian wri-
ter Margaret Laurence angrily told the Toronto
Star following the announcement that the govern-
ment, “‘by knocking out Canada Council, National
Film Board and°CBC budgets, is affecting not just

Canadian culture, but our economy.

‘* Artists, writers and producers will suffer first,
but what will these budget cuts and layoffs do to the
thousands of technical people who work behind the
scenes?” :

There are 198 CBC-TV network positions to go,
68 in Toronto. Ken Hilmer, vice-president of the
500-member Toronto TV -production local of

_ CUPE, said that the cuts here concerned them

because they are producers, and it is the producers
that make the shows.

 “Tt’s devastating for the younger producers,”’ he
said. ‘‘They are being let go when there are already
a million and a half people out of work. They have
no hope of finding another job.”

"Tory axe hits
‘Canadian culture

BLOODBATH AT CBC

Pierre Berton’s reaction was that: it was sad to

~ see that the CBC won’t be able to give Canada a
national voice. ‘‘If ever Canadian culture needs

support, it’s now. Instead it’s being cruelly muti-
lated,’’ he told the Star.
Book publishing is another area that:the Tory
government is zeroing in on. The Communist Party
points out that Canadian book publishers already
facing cuts in Canada Council grants’ will be hit
hard by the disastrous consequences of Tory poli-
cies to open our borders to ‘‘free trade’’ with the

U.S. And the threat that special postage rates for -

Canadian magazines will be phased out menaces
their survival.

Paul Siren, executive director of the Alliance of
Canadian Television and Radio artists.said that the
CBC cutbacks are further evidence of the con-
tinuing strangulation of the Canadian presence in
national broadcasting. ‘‘We have to ask our-

selves,”” he said, ‘‘whether Canadian viewing and -

listening audiences are being surrendered to
America.”

Now that more American programming and
more of the already inane and offensive commer-
cials are going to be seen on CBC-TV, the Com-
munist Party’s warning that there are other, as yet
unrevealed components in Ottawa’s anti-cultural
assault barrage, rings true. There is, its statement
warns, ‘‘the distinct possibility of introducing reac-
tionary new ideological content into our national
life, a push to foist Ottawa’s undemocratic Rea-
ganist outlook into our culture, a new drive to
commercialize culture, to ‘privatize’ the arts, an
intensified continentalism to ‘Americanize’.
Canada.” : :

__ Although the CBC and Canadian culture as a ©
whole are under the axe, where the Tory govern-

ment’s belt tightening policy doesn’t apply is milit-
ary spending. As the Communist Party statement
pointed out, “‘instead of bombs and missiles we

want the funding, the policies which will promote a

flourishing and humane cultural life.”’

Canadians can look forward to more cuts in cul-
tural services shortly. And the consequences can

be dramatic. ‘‘If the Tory politicians succeed in |
their destructive right-wing program,” the CP

statement warns, ‘‘Canada can lose its spirit, its
identity and its independence.” :

This cannot be allowed to happen. It is an issue
‘‘not only for our artists to address, but for all
concerned Canadian progressive citizens — farm-
ers, trade unionists, educators and the public at
large,’ the statement concludes.

Performers
rkle in
oronto
benefit for
Nicaragua

_ TORONTO — Café Sandino
por la Paz (Café Sandino for

Peace), an evening of poetry,

music, prose, song and conversa-
tion to raise money for the
Nicaragua Tools for Peace cam-
paign, debunked the oft-held mis-

conception that performing artists ©

have to be super-commercial and
get flashy star billing to be good.
Sometimes we tend to be.a bit
snooty about artists performing
for a good cause (we’ ll go because

10 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 19, 1984

our conscience says so, not be-
cause we'll get some worthwhile
entertainment), but the artists fea-
tured at the Lyra Coffee House on
Dec. 11 showed that social com-
mitment and professional excel-
lence go hand in hand. »

A packed house was treated to.
some dazzling Latin American
vocal and instrumental music by
three members of the Cupozalko

ensemble, to poignant and
haunting Irish songs and ballads.

footlight footnotes

‘Damage: My dictionary defines it as “‘loss due to injury; hurt;

harm.” The thesaurus gives more choices: ‘mischief, mutilation,
mortal blow, calamity, bruise, wound, tragedy, catastrophe, dis-
aster, foul play’’ ... Maureen Forrester, chairman of the Canada
Council, commenting on the Government’s culture slashes, says
that the Council had ‘‘tried to keep the damage to a minimum, but
it is damage.”’ Take your pick of other definitions: ‘Destruction!
Damnation!” — :

* * *

The democratic (?) process: How often and how virtuously he
railed against Liberal Party political patronage! After the elec-
tion, imperially ensconced in a free, posh pad on Sessex St. in
Ottawa, and after having fired lethal volleys into the ranks of
Canada’s artists, how cynically indeed has the now Prime Minis-
ter and his cabinet affronted the nation’s culture, its self-respect
and independence! . .. He showed them, those unspeakable Lib-
eral patronage peddlers! Virtue would triumph..So he undertook
to demonstrate decent, proper and clean-political patronage. He
appointed a lady from Sept Iles, in his Manicouagan riding, to the
Canada Council. Another of his Canada Council appointments is
a lady prominent in Saskatchewan art circles. And a Quebec City
gentleman, an insurance broker and Tory fund-raiser, has been
elevated to the role of National Arts Centre chairman in Ottawa
_..P.S: —Neither of the two arts bodies involved was consulted,
nor informed of the appointments except by reporters . . . But let
us not despair; our new mentors are all affable, honorable men.

pe ee

_ Masse, Massey: The spelling and the sound are similar but the
values are eons apart. Vincent Massey’s Royal Commission on
National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences pub-
lished its report in 1951. The document was a turning-point, a
green light and a boost for the release and fruition of Canadian
creativity and self-respect ... Marcel Masse, as the Tory Minis-
ter of Communications, is something else again. His ministry, to
date, can perhaps best be described as the Waltz of the Hatchet-
men. :

ak ad iin He

Divestment Canada: The new Ottawa machinery for an escalat-
ing bargain-basement sell-out of Canadian business firms and
Canadian resources to U.S. buyers is called Investment Canada.
The first two words opening this paragraph more accurately
describe the process by which our Foreign Investment Review
Agency (FIRA) has been wrecked and our economic future im-
perilled ... Ottawa hastens to assure us that it will, however,
examine take-over attempts in cultural areas (perhaps book pub-
lishing and film production) . .. But Ottawa’s current behavior on
cultural matters has been less than inspiring; its promises are less
than reassuring; the record and the reality give cuase for monu-
mental concern. :

.

* * *

Free trade in sell-outs: Made-in-U.S.A. continentalist brain-
washers pollute our halls of academe in Canada these days. It is
open season on Canadian culture ... Omur TV recently reported
on three Canadian centres of learning (others to follow?) which
receive financial subsidies from a right-wing U.S. propaganda
institution whose thinkers believe that Canadian universities are
too liberal and too leftist ... The three selected for payoff money

~ are the University of Toronto, McGillin Montreal and Queen’s in

Kingston ... Each now boasts a U.S.-subsidized right-wing stu-
dent publication.
— O.R.

by Loreena McKennitt, accom-
panying herself on the melodious
and velvety troubador harp, and
to Rodolfo Pino who gave us
some wonderful songs of com-
mitment and love from Latin
America, backed by his own in-
Spired guitar work.

Adding somewhat a different
but equally rewarding dimension

were clown Alan Merowitz, and —

popular playwright and essayist
Rick Salutin, who read excepts

to leave early), but from what we

from his descriptive essays on
revolutionary Mozambique, and
from his play Les Canadiens.

Unfortunately we missed
Nancy White and others (havin

did hear, any lingering doubts tha’
social commitment somehow gets —
in the way of performing excel
lence were completely dispelled