Canvas and Interactivity

Looks like some of the WHATWG members are trying to think up ways to
make Canvas more interactive and or accessible:

http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20090710#l-51

Of course this is exactly one of the uses of SVG DOM and event listeners.

I was hoping the SVG WG can work together with the WHATWG/HTMLWG and
come up with something that will reuse the existing technologies
(markups, DOMs) instead of inventing something completely new.  I
guess the goal would be something "less crappy"?

Is there a conceivable middleground between pure immediate-mode
graphics and full-blown, DOM-backed declarative graphics?

Regards,
Jeff