CCA
BULLETIN / BULLETIN DE LA CCA
BUDGET
SCORE: PRUDENCE $4 BILLION; CTF $100 MILLION
Ottawa
, March
23, 2003 - It's clear that culture
is not on the new government's radar! Even though there was news to announce,
it was hidden deep within the budget plan.
In
November the Department of Canadian Heritage revealed the Tomorrow Starts
Today initiative would continue at full funding for the 2004-05 fiscal year,
and the Main Estimates (released 23 February) appear to support this.
That message was excellent news for the cultural sector, which the government
chose to ignore in a Budget speech that had little other mention of culture,
arts, or heritage. The fate of the sector af
ter the 2004-05 fiscal year remains clouded
in obscurity.
Although
CCA
presented its pre-Budget submission as usual last fall, Budget consultations
this year were halted by the prorogation of Parliament; there was therefore
no report from the Standing Committee on Finance and no recommendations to
the Department of Finance.
The
Main Estimates also indicated an amount of $200 million “for programs that
support a cohesive and creative Canada
such as the Canada Television Fund, Official
Languages programs, and several programs for Aboriginal peoples”. While
there is no indication of how this will be parsed out, this is probably the
Tomorrow Starts Today funding (one further year) and the top-up for the CTF.
As usual, CCA
will be embarking on a detailed Budget analysis over the coming weeks, in
an attempt to untangle the line items, monies, and other arcane mentions in
the Main Estimates - this document should be available towards the end of
April.
CCA
was expecting at least some mention of
funding for the international convention to enshrine the rights (and obligations)
of governments to enact cultural policies that promote and develop national
cultural diversity, given that the convention was mentioned in the Speech
from the Throne. The funding for this work, which will af
fect the budget planning for the International
Network for Cultural Diversity (an initiate of the CCA
), may yet be discovered when the budget
analysis is complete.
Canadian
Television Fund
The
only direct mention relating to the cultural sector was in reference to the
Canadian Television Fund whose funding will be restored, although the Budget
documents imply this will only be as of the 2005-06 fiscal year ($100 million).
The Main Estimates show the CTF at $63 million for 2004-05; however,
CCA
has learned that this figure will be topped up to $100 million.
Support
for Voluntary Sector
This year's
Budget contains monies for certain initiatives which will benefit the non-profit
sector and the social economy:
•
increased support for the Voluntary Sector Initiative
($6 million over two years) to “strengthen the sector's capacity to collaborate
and innovate”, and to “support a stronger voice for philanthropic and charitable
organizations in local, regional and national public policy dialogue”;
•
$12 million, in each of two years, for changes
to the regulatory framework for registered charities, based on the recommendations
of the Joint Regulatory Table (an element of the Voluntary Sector Initiative),
including
•
a new compliance regime,
•
a more accessible appeals regime, and
•
more transparency and greater accessibility to
information;
•
a new not-for-profit Corporations Act to “build
a solid foundation upon which Canada's social economy can continue to develop”;
•
development of a bank for the charitable sector
to “broaden the range of financial instruments available to the sector”.
This will be established with private and voluntary sector support, rather than
funding from the government.
There may
be access to funding for cultural organizations under the infrastructure money
in the new deal for communities, although no specifics are given.
A
worrisome theme is the commercialization of research. The government
will be diverting monies into improving “our commercialization performance by
increasingly transforming research outcomes into economic benefits for Canadians”.
This is a worthy outcome of research but it should never be the sole
raison d'être. To quote author Silver Donald Cameron, during the
CCA 's
national policy conference in Halifax
last November: “Is it possible for innovation
to flower when its freedom is curtailed and its objectives are narrowly defined
at the outset? Ask the scientists, who are deeply worried that corporate funding
of research means the neglect of all lines of inquiry that are unlikely to lead
quickly to commercial applications. If Einstein's lab had relied on the arms
industry, would its funding have been continued? And yet, its eventual result
was the greatest ‘innovation', in armaments, of all time: the nuclear bomb.”
The
CCA ,
its members, and a coalition involving the Canada Council, UNESCO and some of
its members, are working together to develop a national strategy for arts and
education. This work is fueled by discussions at CCA
's last policy conference which linked the
importance of a creative education to the development of an innovative workforce.
The government has not yet made the link between creativity and innovation
and continues to pour money into innovation without regard to the creative infrastructure.
For example three federal granting councils* received huge increases
bringing their combined budgets to $1.4 billion, a 90% increase from 1997-98,
while the Canada Council struggled to maintain a hard won $25 million increase.
*
Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering
Research Council of Canada ,
and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
For more
information:
Kevin
Desjardins
Communications
and Public Relations Manager
(613)
238 3561 ext.11
Fax (613)
238 4849
info@ccarts.ca
www.ccarts.ca
15/04
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