Advocacy

Over the years, ELAN‘s members have consistently rated Advocacy as one of our most valued member services, although the benefits are mostly indirect and long-term. ELAN advocates for Quebec’s English-speaking artists in several different arenas.

ELAN regularly meets with government and community leaders about issues concerning funding, market access, community broadcasting, and diversity. ELAN amplifies the voices of fellow arts and culture organizations, and organizations supporting Quebec’s official language minority community.

To ensure that our advocacy work and projects truly reflect the needs of the English-speaking arts community, we depend on our members to share their concerns and opinions with us.

Become a Member

Arts & Community Advocacy

ELAN became a member of the Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN) in 2006, and held a seat on the board for several years. ELAN collaborates closely with QCGN in many interventions in Ottawa. More importantly, ELAN works closely with QCGN and its members to ensure that community leaders appreciate the value of arts and culture as vectors of community vitality, positive identity, and youth retention.

ELAN works with Canada Council, CALQ and CAM to organize information sessions and grant writing workshops for English-speaking artists.

In 2018, ELAN received funding from the Secretariat for Relations with English-speaking Quebecers. One component of this new Government Relations project is to establish an Arts, Culture and Heritage Working Group in Quebec with participation from CALQ, SODEC, the Ministries of Culture and Education, and Télé-Québec.

Meeting with Canada Council for the Arts’ CEO Simon Brault.

Official Languages Advocacy

ELAN’s main funding source has been the Department of Canadian Heritage, under provisions of Canada’s Official Languages Act. ELAN is frequently invited to Ottawa for consultations with Parliamentary Committees and the Senate Standing Committee.

In collaboration with la Fédération culturelle canadienne-française (FCCF), ELAN ensures that arts and culture are well represented as important elements of community vitality.

The Official Languages Act celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2019 with year-long, cross-country consultation, seeking ways modernize the Act. ELAN was actively involved in consultations in Ottawa and Montreal.

Broadcast & Production Advocacy

Since 2008, in collaboration with Kirwan Cox, who became Executive Director of the Quebec English-language Production Council (QPEC) after serving several years on ELAN’s board of directors, ELAN has made dozens of interventions to the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), regarding broadcast policy and broadcasters’ licence renewals.

In 2018, ELAN joined a community media consortium with three community media partners (two representing radio, TV and newspapers in minority French-language communities across Canada, and the Quebec Community Newspapers Association). ELAN is filling a gap by representing English-language Community Radio in Quebec, with assistance from Hugh Maynard.

NFB, ONF Agreement (2015).

Did You Know?

In October 2015, the National Film Board (NFB) signed a $3-million, three-year cooperation and collaboration agreement to strengthen Quebec’s audiovisual sector and culture. This result was generated in collaboration with the Quebec English-Language Production Council.

ELAN gathered community feedback for Quebec’s 2016 Cultural Policy Review, which has gone largely unnoticed in English media.

20% of Videotron’s programming on MAtv, its community television station, is devoted to English-language content – the result of years of intervention alongside community groups and artists working in the field.

Advocacy News

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Director's Message - The QCGN Problem

Screenshot of CTV interview with ELAN Executive Director Guy Rodgers. The Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN) was created 24 years ago as an alternative to Alliance Quebec, which had lost the support of many English-speaking Quebeckers.…
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Statement Regarding Member Resignations from QCGN

The QCGN claims to be a member-driven network but the level of tension within the organization has been rising steadily over the past year to the point where today, nearly a third of voting members have left. The organizations that have left…
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Official Language Community Media Consortium meets with Minister Mélanie Joly

    The Official Language Community Media Consortium has been working for the last two years to raise awareness of the urgent necessity for government support for media in a minority language situation. Through the…
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Bill 21 Discriminates Against Quebecers: Statement from ELAN

As an organization serving the minority-language community of English-speaking Quebecers, ELAN strongly condemns the implementation of Bill 21 and Justice Michel Yergeau’s decision last week to reject an appeal from civil rights organizations…
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Director's Message - September 2018

Guy Rodgers with Board Members Bettina Forget and Kristelle Holliday presenting at ELAN's 14th AGM. Photo by: Nasuna Stuart-Ulin It was a pleasure to see so many of you at ELAN’s 14th Annual General Meeting on August 27th. For those who…
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ELAN's AGM Package - 2018

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ELAN Receives 3-Year Grant to Connect English-Language Artists to Provincial Funding Opportunities

On August 14, 2018, Kathleen Weil (minister responsible for relations with English-speaking Quebecers) announced that $6.9 million will be distributed to four organizations over the course of 3 years to increase and fortify connections between…
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“After years of decreasing production, no less than eight different TV dramas were in production this year. Six were funded by CMF’s [Canada Media Fund] Anglophone Minority Incentive and two from regular CMF funds. The combined budgets of these productions was over $85 million and an additional $10 million was being spent on documentaries. These productions provided work for directors, writers, actors, set and costume designers, and all of the other skills required for television production.”

— A Short History of Broadcasting Advocacy, published by ELAN (2016).

Archives

Over the course of ELAN’s 15 years, we’ve archived surveys, arts research, workshop materials, panel transcripts, project reports, policy papers, briefs and public statements on important issues, press releases, and other media. These archives will soon evolve into a Digital Library!

View Archives

Further Reading

Statistical profile of artists in OLMC (Canadian Heritage, 2011)

The Creative Economy and the English Speaking Communities in Quebec (QUESCREN/Industry Canada, 2012)

Portrait of Official-Language Minorities in Canada – Anglophones in Quebec (Statistics Canada, 2010)

Decline and Prospects of the English-Speaking Communities of Québec (Government of Canada & Canadian Institute for Research on Linguistic Minorities, 2012)

Support Arts Advocacy

Membership is a direct way to build relationships with us, help us to accurately represent your needs, and shape policy. To ensure that our advocacy work and projects truly reflect the needs of the English-speaking arts community, we depend on our members to share their concerns and opinions with us.

Become a Member Now!

460 Sainte-Catherine West
Suites 706 & 708, 917 (Quebec Relations)
Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3B 1A7
Phone: (514)-935-3312
admin@quebec-elan.org

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ELAN is an official minority language organization within a country that only recognizes two languages as official. ELAN is located in Tiohtiak:ke, which is the original name for Montreal in Kanien’keha:ka, the language of the Mohawk—also known as Mooniyang, which is the Anishinaabeg name given to the city by the Algonquin. While we are based in this city, our projects have also taken place in many regions across Quebec.
We would also like to acknowledge the important work being done by First Nations to revive the traditional languages of these territories, and their advocacy for the official status of Indigenous languages. Kanien’keha:ka and Anishinaabeg are but two of the original languages of this province, in which English and French are colonial languages. The province that we know as Quebec is an amalgamation of the traditional territories of the Innu and Inuit nations, Algonquian nations, as well as the Mohawk nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Atikamekw, Cree, Inuktitut, and Innu-aimun are also among the many Indigenous languages spoken across Quebec as majority languages, and well before French and English.