Canada champions a new international approach to bring culture under trade agreements

In the past, countries have tried to maintain their cultural policies by securing a "cultural exemption" from certain trade agreements, or by declining to make trade commitments in specific cultural sectors. But these approaches are increasingly fraught with problems. They do not achieve certainty, they do not foreclose trade retaliation, and they put the fate of domestic cultural policies in the hands of trade bureaucrats, who are ill equipped to deal with them. A new approach is now receiving attention, namely, a new international treaty which would lay out the ground rules for cultural policy and trade, and allow countries around the world to maintain policies that promote their cultural industries. As noted earlier, this concept has been specifically put forward by the Sectoral Advisory Group on International Trade (SAGIT) in Canada. A new cultural treaty would seek to develop an international consensus on the responsibility to encourage indigenous cultural expression and on the need for regulatory and other measures to promote cultural and linguistic diversity. The instrument would not compel any country to take measures to promote culture, but it would give countries the right to determine the measures they will use (within the limits of the agreement) to safeguard their cultural diversity. What would such a treaty do? Among other things, such a treaty would: recognize the importance of cultural diversity; acknowledge that cultural goods and services are significantly different from other products; acknowledge that domestic measures and policies intended to ensure access to a variety of indigenous cultural products are significantly different from other policies and measures; set out rules on the kind of domestic regulatory and other measures that countries can and cannot use to enhance cultural and linguistic diversity; and, establish how trade disciplines would apply or not apply to cultural measures that meet the agreed-upon rules. A kind of blueprint for cultural diversity and the role of culture in a global world, the treaty would clearly define what was covered, and stress the importance of cultural sovereignty. The new treaty would identify the measures that would be covered and those that would not, and indicate clearly where trade disciplines would or would not apply. It would also state explicitly when domestic cultural measures would be permitted and not subject to trade retaliation. If the idea of a new treaty on cultural diversity is to succeed, it will need broad-based support from countries around the world. Just as nations have come together to promote and protect biodiversity, countries will need to come together to promote cultural and linguistic diversity. The above column is an extract from a paper authored by Peter Grant and Carole Tongue, entitled "Building International Support for Cultural Diversity: A Canadian Proposal for an International Treaty and the Position of the European Union Countries". Grant is a senior partner with McCarthy Tétrault and a member of the Cultural Industries Sectoral Advisory Group on International Trade and Tongue is a London UK-based consultant and a former member of the European Parliament. Paper presented at "New Developments in Communications Law and Policy", Law Society of Upper Canada/Canadian Bar Association, Ottawa, April 14, 2000.

Canada champions a new international approach to bring culture under trade agreements

News | 04/27/2000 4:00 am EDT

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