CCA Bulletin 11/07

Ottawa, Monday, March 19, 2007

Federal Budget 2007 falls well short of adopting CCA’s “Creative New Way of Thinking”

The Canadian Conference of the Arts (CCA), the largest national forum for the arts and culture sector in Canada, greets today’s 2007 budget announcement by the Minister of Finance, the Hon. Jim Flaherty, with some measure of disappointment.

“It is unfortunate that the Government did not seize this important opportunity to articulate a long-term vision for the arts and culture sector in Canada. This is an encouraging federal budget, but not an exciting one,” says Alain Pineau, National Director of the Canadian Conference of the Arts (CCA). “The Government has introduced a series of interesting but modest proposals, instead of announcing much-needed new fiscal policy instruments and federal monies for under-resourced programs to invest in the vital contributions made by our working artists and cultural organizations. What Budget 2007 offers are tentative and disjointed steps, whereas what is needed are some giant leaps forward in how the federal government supports the role our arts and culture play in building a strong economy and society.”

Today’s announcement contains the following measures of direct interest to the Canadian arts and culture sector, under the theme of “Strengthening our Culture”:

$30 million a year over 2 years to support local arts and heritage festivals that “engage Canadians in their communities through the expression, celebration and preservation of local culture”;
$5 million a year over 2 years for hiring student internships in museums;
$52 million over 2 years for the 2008 Francophonie Summit in Québec;
$30 million over 2 years to support official languages in minority communities;
Creating “Canada’s National Trust”, based on the successful model of the National Trust in the United Kingdom, which will operate independent of government and encourage Canadians to protect important lands, buildings and national treasures; by its third year in operation, the arms-length Trust’s budget will receive a $5 million annual federal allocation

Other announcements of interest include:

“Exploring the possibility” of new and long-term funding of $500 million per year starting in 2008–09 for labour market training to help Canadians get the training they need through new long-term arrangements. This will be dispended by the provinces as part of addressing “fiscal balance” issues;
Allocating $6 billion in combined new funding to the new “Building Canada Fund” (BCF), investments in gateways and border crossings, and the national fund for public-private partnerships, which will leverage private capital to maximize the impact of the Government’s investments; in particular, the BCF will also be open to “small-scale municipal projects such as cultural and recreational facilities”
Extending to private foundations the elimination of capital gains tax on donations of publicly-listed securities announced in last year’s budget for public charities.

Members and supporters of the CCA should note that, as per usual, we will endeavour to prepare an analysis of the Main Estimates of Budget 2007 upon their release, which will likely be sometime in the next 48-to-72 hours. Known commonly as “the Mains”, the Government’s Main Estimates provide a much clearer breakdown of allocated spending in the agencies and programs of various departments, such as Canadian Heritage, for example.

Additionally, the CCA will once again prepare a more detailed analysis similar in approach to our 2006 piece in order to foster informed debate on cultural policy issues. This should be available sometime in late April / early May 2007, so stay tuned to CCA Bulletins!

Background

In its pre-budget brief of September 7 2006 entitled “A Creative New Way of Thinking”, written in response to extensive consultations, the CCA elected to situate its 2006 pre-budget recommendations against the broader canvas of social and economic change in all sectors of Canadian life. The intent of the CCA's nine recommendations was to encourage a substantive response by the federal government to these fundamental changes that affect, amongst others, hundreds of thousands of Canadians working in the arts and cultural sector. The following is a summary of the CCA’s nine pre-budget recommendations:

The CCA sees the extension of the $ 500 children's physical activity tax credit to include artistic activity as another form of benefit to Canadian families and children, and we urge the Standing Committee on Finance to formally endorse our position.
The CCA recommends that the Standing Committee endorse the benefits of taxation measures to support creativity such as a minimum $ 30 K exemption on revenue deriving from copyright and residual payments, and tax exemption to grants to individual artists and creators.
The CCA recommends that a constructive approach be taken by the government to resolve the inequity in EI and CPP programs for self-employed workers.
At a minimum, the CCA recommends that the Standing Committee discuss the ongoing issue of income averaging with officials from the Department of Finance to determine if a new system could be developed. The CCA also requests that the basic personal deduction limit for self-employed Canadians be raised to $10K.
The CCA supports requests for further increases in the budget of the Canada Council and asks that the increase of $ 30 million to the Council's 2007-08 budget announced in the May 2006 federal budget be made permanent.
The CCA asks the Standing Committee to ensure that it understands the unique funding needs of each of the PCH's cultural agencies and institutions and address them.
The CCA encourages the Minister of Finance and the Standing Committee to address the funding situation of the federal museum and heritage institutions in the upcoming federal budget, as well as the urgency of the development and implementation of a new federal museums policy.
The CCA calls upon the Standing Committee to recommend placing the Canadian Heritage's “Tomorrow Starts Today” suite of programs on a permanent funding basis and expand matching fund programs to complement the changes in the capital gains tax treatment announced in Budget 2006.
The CCA recommends that in its report to the Minister of Finance, the Standing Committee address the concern about over-accountability burden of not for profit and charitable organizations concerning the public financial support they get.

The Canadian Conference of the Arts (CCA) was particularly satisfied that many of our policy priorities were taken up in the December 7 report by the Standing Committee on Finance. The CCA is disappointed, however, that the Government did not include any of our nine policy proposals in its 2007-08 Budget.