Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Foreign Affairs and International Trade
Issue No. 47 - Evidence - Meeting of May 30, 2018
OTTAWA, Wednesday, May 30, 2018
The Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade met this day at 4:19 p.m. to study the impact and utilization of Canadian culture and arts in Canadian foreign policy and diplomacy, and other related matters.
Senator A. Raynell Andreychuk (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Honourable senators, the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade has been authorized by the Senate to study on the impact and utilization of Canadian culture and arts in Canadian foreign policy and diplomacy, and other related matters.
Under this mandate, the committee is pleased to continue today’s study and hear from Dr. Nicholas Cull, Professor, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California.
Welcome, Dr. Cull, to our committee and thank you for travelling all the way to Ottawa for this meeting. We think your testimony is important and, therefore, we’re very pleased to have you before us.
Before I turn to your testimony, I am going to ask the senators to introduce themselves.
Senator Cools: My name is Anne Cools. I am a senator from Toronto, Ontario. I’ve been a senator for 35 years, and I am deputy chair of this committee.
Senator Bovey: Patricia Bovey, a senator from Manitoba.
[Translation]
Senator Cormier: René Cormier from New Brunswick.
Senator Massicotte: Paul Massicotte from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Greene: Stephen Greene, Nova Scotia.
Senator Oh: Victor Oh, Ontario.
The Chair: Raynell Andreychuk from Saskatchewan and the chair.
Welcome to the committee, Dr. Cull. We usually have an opening statement and then senators will probably put questions to you.
The floor is yours.
Nicholas Cull, Professor, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, as an individual: Madam Chair and senators, it’s an honour to be invited to address the issue of culture as a component of foreign policy, which I’ve studied for some years now.
The term I use to conceptualize the work is cultural diplomacy. Cultural diplomacy is an international actor’s engagement of a foreign public through intervention of some kind in the cultural field. This includes fine arts, high culture, the lived experience of an actor, and the popular culture of language, food, sport and popular entertainment. International actors use a range of terms to refer to this work. These terms each reveal a state of mind and their preferred frame for the work.
The United States speaks of cultural diplomacy as a way of stressing the utility of the activity to the state.
The U.K. prefers the term cultural relations that implies an organic process in which the government acts as a facilitator.
In Japan, the preferred term is cultural exchange, which emphasizes an idea of mutual learning, perhaps to reassure recipients.
Whatever we call it, it’s an important tool for developing what Joseph Nye referred to as the soft power that comes from the admiration for a country’s values and culture.
A social psychologist would see it in terms of the so-called halo effect. The halo effect is a phenomenon whereby a perceived excellence in one area when encountered first brings benefit in an unrelated area. It’s why advertisers get an unfeasibly attractive person to endorse a product when doing an advertisement in a magazine.
Theorists of nation branding see culture as one component of the brand and cultural diplomacy as one of the mechanisms to build an international brand around the world.
Cultural diplomacy has a rich history. We have examples from the era of ancient Greece, Rome, the great Asian kingdoms of Ashoka in India or China’s Emperor Taizong; but it was in France that the approach really came into its own. From the days of Cardinal Richelieu onward, France sought to project a cultural vision to its own people, its neighbours and to the world. In time, other countries responded with their own efforts.
One interesting feature of this history is the importance of private, non-governmental and citizen organizations in cultural diplomacy like, for example, the Alliance Française. We may come to see the state’s role as a kind of monopoly driver of cultural diplomacy as just an anomaly of the Cold War and not the best way going forward.
The value of cultural diplomacy can be demonstrated in more ways than just counting the number of visitors to an exhibition or an expo pavilion. In 2012, the British Council study called Trust pays. They found that exposure to the U.K. cultural outreach increased a foreign individual’s trust in the U.K. by, on average, 16 per cent. In sine countries it was much more than 16 per cent, as high as 25 per cent. The increased trust meant increased business with the U.K.
In 2017, a professor at Edinburgh University called J.P. Singh led a study called Soft Power Today: Measuring the Influences and Effects, looking to see whether strength in the field of soft power like cultural diplomacy correlated with tangible foreign policy successes, such as the ability to win votes in the United Nations General Assembly. He found a very strong link and concluded:
Great power influence in international diplomacy is less dependent on their hard power and more on their soft power including their cultural rank and lack of political restrictions.
Canada performs very well in the UN and in rankings of countries able to attract foreign direct investment, but at the time Singh’s study was slipping below what would be normally expected in other measures such as tourism and international university recruitment, which suggests that there is work to be done in this area.
I see four core approaches to cultural diplomacy, and all of these have their place. The first is the most obvious one, and this is what I call the cultural gift. This is when international actors select an element of their culture, which they themselves value, to present to a foreign audience in the hope of exciting admiration or appreciation from this audience. The classic Canadian example of this would be Glenn Gould’s tour of the Soviet Union in the late 1950s.
The second approach I call cultural information. This is sharing a lesser known dimension of their culture overseas to correct an image or tell foreigners about something they don’t know. A Canadian example would be the way in which, in the 1980s, the NFB/ONF distributed films presenting First Nation culture to an international audience.
Third is cultural capacity building. This is where an international actor will identify a need that an international audience has and meet that need through a program of capacity building, which can in turn promote understanding, build links and promote development. A good Canadian example of this would be the old academic Canadian studies program, where Canada subsidizes literature and historical studies at foreign universities. It did amazing work for surprisingly little money.
The fourth, and the one I think is the most important and forgotten one, is cultural dialogue. This is using culture as a site of exchange of dialogue. Canadian examples include the four cultural dialogue conferences organized by Can4Culture with China as a forum for discussing this area.
A well-planned piece of cultural diplomacy can actually hit all four of these marks and tick all of those boxes.
Of course, there are multiple genres of cultural diplomacy. I know you’ve been thinking and talking about these over the past months you’ve been meeting. Arts diplomacy works through music, fine art, theatre, dance and festivals. Sports diplomacy can work with events. Heritage diplomacy engages around material culture or even in tangible cultural practices like dance or handicraft. Then there’s gastro diplomacy working with culinary culture.
The advent of digital and social media has changed the terrain of cultural diplomacy. It opens new exchanges for collaboration, new platforms for engagement and perhaps, most seriously, new challenges and obligations to help other countries around the world cope with our digital world.
For Canada, this means new soft power resources that you might not have thought about. I wonder if this committee knows the name Lilly Singh. For teenagers around the world, Lilly Singh is one of the most famous people in the world. She’s a star on YouTube and is already being used by UNICEF as a cultural diplomacy asset.
Other YouTubers of Canadian origin include Gigi Gorgeous and the Eh Bee Family. I think of that old parlour game of “and no one knows they are really Canadian” has a whole new lease on life.
Despite its track record, cultural diplomacy is prone to a number of recurring problems. Culture will always be complex and contradictory, as the human beings who create it are complex and contradictory.
In the West, at least, there will always be a voice somewhere in society objecting to spending public funds on something so frivolous or so connected to this or that undesirable trait.
This is not to say that actors should avoid cultural diplomacy but that an entity going into cultural diplomacy must expect criticism and design a firewall for anything that you recommend to protect the acting agency from a tabloid newspaper that objects to a particular painting at a biennale, a particular film at an international festival or a particular artist being involved in a federally funded project.
Using culture as a mechanism for self-promotion only neglects some of the deeper power in this field. We know that people learn best through participation and develop attachments the same way. They are influenced by people who are similar to themselves, who care about the same things as themselves. Well chosen projects of collaboration in the cultural field can be the building blocks of peace in even the most unpromising situations.
An obvious example of this is the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra founded by Daniel Barenboim and the late Edward Said to bring together musicians of Arab and Jewish origin. Cultural agencies have the potential to act as intermediaries, empowering others to express themselves and to communicate not only the superficial charm of one’s own culture but to extend an underlying meaning of a system of value and self-realization.
In recognition of this, many international actors have come to emphasize cultural programs which foreground collaboration exchange and educational work. This is moving beyond the old approach of isn’t it wonderful that Cirque du Soleil is coming to your town. This is about actually bringing in people to co-create a cultural theme.
Finally, I want to address the issue in my remaining moments of why Canada needs to act. For Canada, specifically, you may ask, “This country already enjoys a positive reputation. It’s rated so highly in the nation brand and soft power indices, what could cultural work contribute?” This is true, but there are some areas we know from polling that foreigners do not value in Canada. I think they underestimate Canada in the field of heritage, for example.
My reply is that a positive reputation takes a long time to develop. The reputation that Canada currently enjoys was earned in decades past by programs which included cultural diplomacy and work such as attending and hosting expos. I think it’s a concern that Canada has yet to commit to attending the 2020 Expo.
That reputation, the reputation of Canada as a good and engaged country, has proven to be robust enough to survive a level of neglect, but that survival is not without limit. I believe that each generation must pay rent on a good reputation. It must affirm it and provide enough evidence to sustain it in the international imagination.
This committee has an opportunity, therefore, to move forward a great work and pass Canada’s enviable reputation onto a new generation. Thank you for inviting me and for your kind attention. I look forward to an opportunity for questions.
The Chair: Thank you for the presentation. You have covered a lot of ground. There are a lot of senators who wish to question you.
Senator Bovey: Thank you, professor. I think that was a very compelling, interesting and insightful presentation.
I have two questions to ask, if I may. I want to come back to Soft Power 30 and Portland report in which Canada was ranked fifth last year and which you were part of. You said that we’re slipping. You also said that the reputation we have was earned a number of years ago. You also mentioned that the Canadian studies program no longer receives funding.
I wonder if all that ties into the ranking and if you could tell us what makes us fifth.
Mr. Cull: The first thing to say is, “Don’t put too much emphasis on rankings.” You can choose between rankings and find different placements, but if you average between the different rankings you get a sense that Canada is a country clearly in the top 10, probably in the middle of the top 10, and one which is well regarded.
At the moment some of the interest in Canada is related to difficulties in a neighbour and Canada, shall we say, is comparing especially well at the moment to a neighbour. I think this is playing out in terms of educational recruitment. I believe the latest figures are that Canada is going forward, managing to recruit more international students than had been the case in the past.
In terms of Canada’s soft power, what’s important to me is that a country is relevant and that Canada does things other people are interested in. It’s perfectly possible for Canada to speak in a cultural sense or in a cultural capacity and to say things that the world has no interest in whatsoever. You have to be careful and selective in the things you talk about and choose to be part of conversations that are relevant to the rest of the world.
The example that I usually give when talking about relevance is to point to when Taiwan did some very expensive calligraphy exhibits overseas. It’s hard enough to find Chinese people who understand calligraphy. It is not something that a foreigner would be able to take on board. I am not sure what Canada’s equivalent of calligraphy would be. For me, it would be anything to do with ice hockey. It’s important to be careful what you speak about, and you cannot assume that any dollar spent on cultural diplomacy will necessarily translate into advancing in soft power rankings. In fact, it is most important to be a country that is positive in the world and to be involved in positive discussions and in positive cultural actions in the world.
People are central as never before to foreign policy. The big change that has come from our communications revolution is that you can no longer put people at the edge of foreign policy. They have to be at the centre. Culture is all about people, so finding ways of engaging people, not just politically but culturally, is the way to think about it.
Does that help, senator?
Senator Bovey: It does, and it leads right into my second question. I will quote from an article from May 21 entitled “Mr. Trump kills the canary: The danger of dehumanization.”
I was interested in a quote at the end of the article:
Our task is to connect our citizens with those of other nations and, if necessary, to disprove the dehumanization of our own image and the images our interlocutors hold of one another.
I wonder if you could elaborate on that a bit in taking a look at how cultural diplomacy might help connect citizens of different countries.
Mr. Cull: I should say for people who have not read it that I was the author Senator Bovey is citing.
My point in that article was that a lot of the problems in the world come from our failure to perceive others as being fully human. Some of the language that’s being thrown around in international discourse at the moment is frankly dehumanizing. Some of the things the President of the United States has said about African countries and about Hispanic migrants, I do not think should be said in public discourse.
It’s important to provide mechanisms for people to understand that not only do we see them as human but we ourselves are human. To be honest about the questions that have occurred to us historically, the problems we’ve had meeting the social issues and the art that has come out of those problems, is incredibly important. Not only understanding our interlocutors as human but revealing ourselves as human is important, and cultural diplomacy is an amazing mechanism for doing that.
We can think of, for example, the contribution of Canada to the field of women’s writing in the work of Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood. They’ve opened up not just the Canadian experience but women’s experience to other women around the world. This has been part of Canada’s gift to the world. It is an important thing to share. It’s of tremendous relevance and is worth celebrating.
Senator Oh: We often hear about the cultural mosaic versus the melting pot and the distinctions between Canada and the U.S. In Canada, we promote multiculturalism and diversity.
Do you think that this distinction will play a role in the Canadian approach to cultural diplomacy compared to that in the U.S.?
Mr. Cull: Everywhere in the world is now facing a variety of the same question. Populations are mobile as never before, so most countries, and certainly most developed countries, have many citizens who were not born in that country but are now finding a place in that country. This raises issues around integration and national identity.
As every country is struggling with finding its position on a spectrum around these issues, we can learn from one another. The Canadian example, going back for a long time, has been managing difference because of the nature of Canada. It has had to manage diversity in a number of ways for a long time, both French/English and First Nations/European diversities. It has a lot of experience in this area. It’s not without problems. The experiences have been hard learned in many ways.
I think that’s worth bringing to global attention and an important area in which to facilitate a discussion, but I don’t think Canada should go forward with some kind of one size fits all.
The answer is Canada. Now what’s the question? That’s not what the Canadian way has been about, but it would be helpful to have a dialogue around the issues of diversity. I think Canada has credibility as a voice in this area. It’s one of the areas in which Canada has a special credibility.
Senator Oh: In your remarks you mentioned investment, that cultural diplomacy plays an important role in economics and in investment. Could you tell us a bit more?
Mr. Cull: This is the finding of my colleague J.P. Singh. He was able to correlate what he called countries that had a high cultural engagement with countries that were also able to attract foreign direct investment. His argument in the paper that I cited was that investing in cultural diplomacy was not some kind of black box unconnected to the other things that you want in the state. Rather, it was something that a state might ordinarily expect to be doing as part of the overall balanced representation of itself in the world. A top five nation state would be expected to have a top five cultural diplomacy program. This would be a way in which all kinds of not just political but financial benefits would come.
I have not seen those figures myself. It’s his research. I think it makes perfect sense that people would be attracted to a country that was a good cultural citizen and that attraction would include sending money their way. That’s the link, as I see it.
In that report he has very detailed numbers. Canada does well in attracting foreign direct investment, but my suspicion is that it could do even better. To sustain that kind of profile it needs to do something now to maintain that reputation into the future.
Senator Massicotte: Thank you, Mr. Cull, for being with us. I found your presentation to be very good, by the way. I think you have good information, but let me play devil’s advocate a bit, just to make sure we get all the facts on the table.
You say there’s empirical evidence by Mr. Singh that if you develop a positive reputation through cultural activities, you will attract investment. Does his study simply say you will get some return or, more importantly, does he suggest that the investment and the benefits from investment exceed the cost of developing that reputation?
Mr. Cull: Yes, absolutely. It’s quite clear that we’re talking about exceeding the investment or exceeding the money put in by a wide margin. The same with the British Council’s study of 2012, Trust pays. That was as explicit as it could be by using “pay” with a double meaning.
The British Council only gets a third of its budget from the U.K. government. Two-thirds come from shaking down international audiences to learn English and to register for exams in the U.K. They can run an awful lot from paid services. A bit of investment leads to a big return. That’s the picture.
Senator Massicotte: I am from the corporate world, and I view that to say that every organization bears the same. If you can develop a positive reputation, a trusting relationship, using the U.K. experience, it’s quite natural that people like you and trust you. They’re more apt to do business with you because business is based on trust.
I think that’s positive, but in the real world I always say that you can spend a lot of money creating favourable impressions. Call it public relations or call it what you wish, but the bottom, bottom line is how you behave. That would be much more important than the money you spend on cultural activities. If you don’t act in a behaviour that’s trustworthy or coherent with strong values, all this other stuff is lost money, probably.
Could you comment on that?
Mr. Cull: Absolutely, I agree with that. I feel that some of the countries I have had conversations with look on public diplomacy and cultural diplomacy as kind of magic dust: It doesn’t matter how horrible your country is. If you can put together a great Expo pavilion, everything will be right with the world.
You have to say your deeds are the most powerful voice you have in the world, and people learn how to interpret the deeds of a country. To be honest, Canada has had some very impressive deeds in the past that people remember, but it has to keep the deeds coming because eventually they’ll run out.
I should tell you a story that happened at home on Sunday. My son likes to cook bacon on Sunday. He’s also a teenager, and that means being responsible for your consumer choices. He was reading the small print on a packet of bacon, and he was saying, “Was this bacon humanely produced?” He was going through it, and he said, “Oh, wait a minute. It’s made in Canada. Oh, it’s going to be fine.”
The idea that if something comes from Canada it’s going to be good and it’s going to be ethical and that a California teenager would assume something about its origin, are very hard things to buy. You don’t want to lose that association.
Senator Massicotte: I have a last question. When some of the witnesses we had when you reviewed the history of the money we spent on cultural diplomacy, they would accuse the previous government for around 10 years of significantly reducing the budget for cultural activities nationally and internationally. Obviously, that’s a personal opinion of those people.
If that is the case in your observation, did you see a decrease in our reputation on the world scene relative to the fact we were spending less money on cultural activities outside our borders?
Mr. Cull: To be honest, I was waiting for the crash. One of the things that’s said about international reputation is that countries are like stars. This is what Simon Anholt observed. Countries are like stars. What we see is not how they are now. It is the light that comes from how they were years and years ago.
Canada, under the previous government, had pulled out of its cultural work. The emphasis in public diplomacy was exclusively on the advocacy component and this was a dangerous strategy.
Because of this idea of light taking a long time to reach us, it hasn’t played directly into Canada’s reputation, but if sustained long enough it will do and it has done. In time, people do notice. They tune into a gap between what a country says it is or what you feel a country is and then how it’s actually delivering.
Countries that have come unstuck like this include Denmark with the Danish cartoon crisis that suddenly delivered to an international audience evidence that Denmark was not all about liberalism and multiculturalism but was actually quite protective of its identity and could be quite insensitive and intolerant.
Even non-Muslim countries felt the Danes were less friendly, less likely to be accepting of them, whatever their origin, and they thought the Danish countryside was less beautiful.
Senator Massicotte: Given our past behaviour, you expect the light will reach us in the next five to 10 years no matter how much we spend.
Mr. Cull: No, as long as there is enough evidence coming. People are looking for their previous idea to be confirmed. It’s called the confirmation bias. As long as Canada at some point ponies up with good cultural activity that confirms a humanitarian, engaged and multicultural vision, then no one will notice there was a little flicker there.
Ten years of no funding is not a very long time. The damage hasn’t been done. Unless something happens, people will notice the gap because they will grow up without being affirmed in Canada behaviour.
Senator Massicotte: When you talk about our reputation or the image we have nationally, it’s a very broad definition. You are not only talking culturally. You are talking about everything we do as a nation that sticks to us relative to our identities and our values.
Mr. Cull: Absolutely, yes.
Senator Massicotte: It’s very, very broad.
Mr. Cull: It’s very broad, but a country of Canada’s size should be participating more in terms of its culture than Canada actually is. There are great Canadian stories to be told, and there are great Canadian institutions that can participate in a global conversation. There are people who are waiting who would really benefit from Canada’s role in that conversation. I’d love to see them involved.
Senator Massicotte: When you look at the way we spin our cultural diplomacy, even we ourselves are having a tough time in what is it we’re doing because there are so many departments that are so spread out. They do it out of habit. They do it because they love the arts. I don’t personally see a very specific plan to say we’ll do that with this consequence.
We’ll try to measure the consequence, but it’s sporadic, very personal and highly political without there really being a business argument and a business plan.
Maybe you don’t agree with the observation, but isn’t that a consequence? I always find in life sometimes you get lucky and win the lottery, but you usually get results if you plant to seek the results with a scientific approach to the whole issue.
Can you comment on that?
Mr. Cull: I am very aware that I am not a Canadian. I am not even a real American. I am from the United Kingdom. My sense is that success needs planning and a strategic approach is important. Just letting things happen is not the best way of doing it. The best way is to actually have some kind of strategic direction, discussion and an association between the different stakeholders in the field.
My suspicion is that we’re on the same page, senator, but I have to be careful here as I am not a Canadian. I would like to see a much more strategic approach with a sense of what Canada’s strengths were, with a sense of what the world’s needs were and are, and a sense of where Canada can make a difference in cultural terms.
Senator Massicotte: You seem like such a nice fellow that you’re nearly Canadian, I think.
Mr. Cull: It’s the bacon. That’s right, it’s the bacon that takes you over.
[Translation]
Senator Cormier: First, I would like to say that the complexity of cultural diplomacy can sometimes be related to how Canadians perceive themselves. That is one of the challenges of cultural diplomacy.
Thank you for your very eloquent presentation that, at the same time, raises a multitude of visions and possible challenges in defining an effective cultural diplomacy strategy for Canada. As you said, Canada is a diverse country. We recognize this diversity, and it sometimes poses a challenge in terms of what image of ourselves we want to project outward.
You have developed different possible strategies: culture as a gift, cultural information, cultural capacity-building and cultural dialogue. So there are different ways of using culture for the benefit of public diplomacy and for the benefit of Canada’s positive image.
How do you think we can have both an effective strategy with specific objectives, while keeping in mind this notion of flexibility that is necessary in international relations, taking into account the image and the changes that are occurring in the international landscape and that make it necessary for Canada to adapt as well?
[English]
Mr. Cull: Well, the first thing you have to do is care about it enough to put resources behind it. I think that isn’t going to happen without a will. I guess your role is to convince the foreign minister and other people in government that this is an important and neglected part of Canada’s public diplomacy.
For me, the most important part of the public diplomacy and cultural diplomacy is listening first, listening to the foreign public, finding out what the world needs, and then thinking how Canada’s interests intersect with this need. It isn’t enough to think who Canada would like to be in the world. You have to tie it to specific needs and present something of genuine interest and genuine value.
Flexibility is important. It would be a mistake to attempt to create some kind of bricks and mortar response, to actually have buildings that were Canada houses. I think the world has moved on from that.
As a returning presence in cultural diplomacy, it would be better to work with a light footprint but with well-chosen projects and especially well-chosen partnerships.
Does that help?
Senator Cormier: Yes, it does.
You talked about the positive image that Canada should bring forward. You talked about culture, saying that it is complex and contradictory. You also talked about a firewall.
Could you expand on that? I would like to understand how we can do that.
[Translation]
When we think of censorship, what is the relationship between the government, this policy and artists?
[English]
Mr. Cull: One of the tremendous problems for cultural diplomacy is what you do with artists. How does a government work with artists? Often governments are compromised by artists, and artists are compromised by governments.
In 1947, there was an incident when the United States thought it would be a good idea to send abroad modern art because they were competing with Stalin. All the paintings from the Soviet Union were these big men with tractors and handsome ladies with big blond hair and bunches of wheat. The socialist realism style was not really internationally marketable.
The United States had these amazing modern paintings that could be very exciting to international audiences. It worked fantastically until the domestic audiences found out about the paintings. Then the magazines started saying, “Oh, your tax dollars paid for this painting.”
President Truman made the mistake of commenting on artistic value. He said, “I am an artist. When I look at this paining, I feel it doesn’t show skill and art can be judged by the amount of skill.” Then you get into a situation where the President of the United States was acting as an art critic in public. He should have said, “The State Department worked with the art community to select these pictures. You might not like it and I might not like it, but audiences like it. It is a genuine part of what artistic culture is in this country right now.”
Let’s talk about things that we can control, and things that we have an ability to speak about. That firewall has been part of British cultural diplomacy. It doesn’t stop the criticism coming up, but it’s possible to say, “But that’s the British Council. They’re representing culture as it really is.” Usually the minister or the newspaper making the criticism ends up looking silly because they do not like bad language in plays or whatever it is they’re concerned about.
You need to have a very clear mandate to represent the culture as it’s lived and as it’s explored by real artists and not some kind of sanitized culture rendered safe for international audiences. It is like giving a little kid scissors with the ends rounded. People know the difference. An international audience wants to really see what’s part of cultural production, and not some kind of neutered thing for international circulation.
[Translation]
Senator Cormier: This is quite enlightening. Thank you very much, Mr. Cull.
[English]
Senator Cools: Thank you very much. I have been listening to you, professor, for quite some time, and I’ve been listening very carefully. You’ve obviously given these issues much thought and much consideration.
You said two things. One was that Canada has much credibility in the world. Then you said a few minutes later that Canada’s current reputation was acquired years ago. Could you expand on those two statements for me, please?
Mr. Cull: The first statement was that Canada has great credibility.
Senator Cools: Right.
Mr. Cull: Sure. The credibility comes from the things Canada has done. For example, from my parents’ generation, they remember who provided blue helmets at Suez. People remember Lester Pearson. If not the name, they remember the contribution that Canada made at that point. People remember the Montreal Expo, that amazing cultural moment of the centenary of Confederation and how that was celebrated. People remember the Olympics. They remember Vancouver and all kinds of other things that have been part of Canada’s cultural citizenship in the world.
I see these as being related. Does that answer your question?
Senator Cools: Yes. I was just thinking about it in my own mind. You are correct on that. The things that Canada is known for were done a long time ago. We are still running, then, really on achievements that are now far in the past. It does not mean that we stop achieving. It means we need to have a much more forward-looking approach.
I was very struck by that because it is quite true. What do people know about Canada? Everybody will tell you Expo 67, and so on and so forth.
I thank you for bringing that insight to my attention. We have to be very forward looking now and push toward the future.
The Chair: I am just going to put a few questions before we go to the second round.
I am having difficulty. It may be as chair because I am thinking about the report we have to write. We’re covering a lot of ground. Part of it really is to define culture and define it in the context of what governments should be doing. I am mindful of censorship and propaganda being utilized over the centuries and of artists being part of that dilemma. That’s one area I am having difficulty with.
Where do our rights and values start in culture? To me, they’re all the same. One day I would talk to you about cultural diplomacy and define it in the old way of the British Council, which was self-serving in many ways. It was in the Commonwealth that they started and moved out. Now they’re teaching English as a second language.
The difficulty of looking back on cultural diplomacy as it was defined in some countries is looking back. How do we define it looking forward, bearing in mind some of what you said on our reputation is very much built on rights and values? Article 5 of the NATO charter is our common defence. Equally important is article 2, where we talk about values and what brings us together as nations in that way.
You can look at what we do with the UN. It’s a bit of our culture that drives our value system, our rights, et cetera. If we are to go forward, how do we define it in more progressive terms than the old we’re going to pitch our culture? How do we incorporate that part into it? That’s one thing I am struggling with.
The second part of it is what you alluded to at the start. I am still thinking of paintings, books and art being dance and music, whereas when I talk to young people it’s all the new technologies. You gave me some names of some Canadians. I will plead ignorant right there. I am not on Facebook or Yahoo or all those things on a daily basis like other people are.
If we are to recommend something to government, what do we say to them is the transmission to other countries? Is it going there, is it disseminating there or is it using modern technologies?
We have more in our basket than we’ve had before. Help me with some of that struggle, if you can, or am I back to bacon?
Mr. Cull: No, I think those are very good questions. I think you could meet for a year. There are entire degree programs, and all they do is think about the nature of culture. You might work for an entire career and not come to a conclusion on that. There are entire sciences. The science of anthropology is built around considering culture. I wouldn’t deign to offer a definition.
What I do with my students when we have this discussion is I get them to think about what is included within culture, what they feel is important, what is the largest culture they could imagine and what is the smallest culture they could imagine. Eventually, they themselves reveal that they know what they’re talking about and the scope of the discussion.
I feel it most important that culture is not limited to being about the arts but is about lived experience and is open to emerging experiences that come out of the kind of cultural mixture that Senator Oh was speaking about and the multicultural landscape of a country like Canada, which is throwing up new kinds of cultural mixtures all the time.
I think that values are best taught through showing rather than telling. For Canada to reveal its values through the kinds of discussions it facilitates is better than going out and having a lecturer explain Canadian values in some kind of lecture in an embassy foyer.
When the British Council was set up, it was designed to be counterpropaganda; to save the world from Communism on one hand and the Nazis on the other; and by telling everyone what a great idea constitutional monarchies were, how terrific Shakespeare was and what a lovely language the English language was. That was very much a one-way approach, but that’s a 70 or 80-year-old approach.
Today, the British Council thinks about its role as connecting futures and bringing people together. Sometimes Britain isn’t even mentioned. They’re doing something that is culturally helpful, helping people to reconcile, for example, in a post-conflict environment.
An important element is developing what they call 21st century skills. We’re at a very dangerous point. For some actors in the world, media and culture have been weaponized. They’re being used to disrupt. They’re being used to reduce security because these actors understand that in a world where nobody trusts the only thing you trust is absolute power. If you work for the strongest guy in the room, why would you want an emphasis on organizations, trust, dialogue, or any of these things? You just want strength.
In the face of this, some of the most important cultural work you can do is by helping people to develop the kinds of cultural literacy, cultural dialogue and civic culture that are part of our lives as Britons, as Americans and as Canadians, and by finding ways to share that and to work in partnership.
Very little of the most important cultural diplomacy now happens unilaterally. More and more happens with multiple donors getting involved to develop a cultural project, say, in the Western Balkans or to help Russian-speaking communities, in a place like Estonia, to develop a sense of themselves so that they’re not just puppets of the Kremlin.
Finding ways of working collectively to promote the cultural objectives and values we share is more important than just saying, “Don’t you wish your country was as culturally wonderful as mine? Maybe, in a few hundred years, you’ll be as culturally excellent as Canada, and you’ll have poets and singers like Leonard Cohen. Just you wait. It’ll be terrific.”
This has to be about more than that. This is more than just showing off. This has to be about being a good cultural citizen and building something worthwhile overseas.
The Chair: I think you and I could continue because what you talked about at the end was really a value system.
Mr. Cull: Absolutely, yes.
The Chair: That’s why I am saying culture, rights and values. You used the Pearson example. I wouldn’t have thought that was culture. I would have thought it was our values.
We had an opportunity to bring something to the Suez crisis, and the Canadian perspective was to find a consensus and to have peacekeeping. People remember that, but they also remember Africa and our prime ministers standing up against apartheid in the Commonwealth. We probably don’t remember in Canada, but let me tell you they bring that up to me every time I am in Africa. They remember Diefenbaker, Mulroney and Chrétien for bringing it up. I wouldn’t have framed that as culture.
How do we blend the best of what we have in Canada and package it? I think that’s what you started to answer for me, and I appreciate that.
Mr. Cull: I feel you’re asking the right questions. There is no clear divide between where the values end and the culture begins because the culture creates the values and the values create the culture. The culture is a point of access to the values. The values are so clearly underpinning the culture.
You can get to these values through reading Alice Munro or through viewing Atom Egoyan. These are ways into thinking about what it is not just to be Canadian but what it is to be human. They’re part of a country’s gift to the world.
Working with that constructively and finding ways to connect that to the debates that are happening elsewhere and the struggles that are happening elsewhere are really positive things to do.
Senator Bovey: I have a wind-up thought from some of what has been said. I thank you. I think the questions and answers have been fantastic.
You talked about strategy and where there’s a will gives us the ability to lead. I certainly agree, but it’s not just what happens to Canadian art and Canadian culture from a Canadian perspective. We have to recognize how many other countries have not only fed into our development of culture, given the immigration record we’ve had, but how many are supporting Canadian art today.
Alice Munro’s Nobel Prize didn’t come from within Canada. Ed Burtynsky’s Master Photography Award at Photo London this month didn’t come from Canada. I could go on.
Yes, we can have a strategy, but I think we also need to have open doors and open windows to understand the opportunities for collaboration and the opportunities for recognition so that there are those moments. We can only have moments if we have the ladder in place for those moments.
Mr. Cull: Yes, that’s right.
Senator Bovey: I am not sure that’s a question. When we talk about strategy, we can strategize a lot of it, but I don’t contend in the art world and cultural world that we can strategize all of it.
Mr. Cull: No, I think that’s correct.
[Translation]
Senator Cormier: Perhaps this will be more of a comment than a question. When we think of cultural diplomacy, I have to come back and think of our own internal cultural policy in Canada. And I wonder what your thoughts are on this desire for cultural diplomacy and our capacity or the type of cultural policy we give ourselves in our country. How is this link important? How does our domestic cultural policy help us to define the outside? Without being critical of our Canadian cultural policies, I find that they pose many challenges. We want to establish a dialogue with the rest of the world, and sometimes it is very difficult to establish a dialogue between us on the cultural level. How can all this be reconciled?
[English]
Mr. Cull: I think, senator, you raise an important point. Nobody could speak to Canadians without realizing that Canada is a work in progress.
One of Canada’s strengths is its approach to international discussion by saying, “Look, we are working with these issues. We are learning about how best to manage diversity, but we haven’t got all the issues right.” This is especially clear in issues around First Nations rights and the treatment of Aboriginal peoples.
Being honest about that, it will paradoxically make Canada more attractive and more relevant to discussions because most countries in the world are aware they don’t have all the answers. The countries that are super self-confident and present themselves as having all the answers are relative rarities. Maybe they just speak louder.
The way to deal with that is to be honest about the limits of cultural policy at home, to celebrate the successes and to be sure that if Canada is to talk the talk internationally, it has to walk the walk domestically. It’s important to remember that these values have to be lived domestically. You have to always be on watch to make sure those values are being honoured.
The Chair: I may start another conversation about our customs, our food, et cetera. All of those are the fun parts of diplomacy when I’ve been overseas and sharing. That’s usually the way you break ice.
Mr. Cull: Just don’t drink the fermented horse milk in Kazakhstan.
The Chair: The bacon from Canada in California will stay with me for a while.
Thank you for coming. I think you’ve opened a lot of avenues. You’ve supported what we’ve heard in other ones. We continue to expand. At some point we will have to bring it all together into a report.
If you have any thoughts that would be helpful, we’re certainly open to that. Thank you for making the effort to come. It has been very helpful to the committee, as you can tell from the questions.
(The committee adjourned.)