CCA BULLETIN 30/07
August 16, 2007
2008 Pre-Budget Consultation:
the CCA Urges the Government to Invest in the Creative Economy!
Just the facts
The Canadian Conference of the Arts (CCA) has filed yesterday its submission to the Standing Committee on Finance in the context of the 2008 pre-budget consultation: “A Creative Canadian Economy: taxation and beyond”.
The CCA has been a participant in pre-budget consultations for over twenty years. During this time, a broad series of recommendations have been put forward to the Minister of Finance and the Standing Committee on Finance. Last year , the CCA stressed the importance of reflecting the changing realities of the Canadian labour force through measures to provide greater access to social benefits and security to self-employed Canadians, which is the case for a majority of workers in the cultural sector. Many of these recommendations were restated in the response of the CCA to the Advantage Canada framework later released by the Minister of Finance.
This year, the Committee has set the theme for the consultation as “The Tax System the Country needs for a prosperous future”.
The CCA recognizes that over the past twenty-five years, the federal government has provided important taxation benefits to self-employed artists and creators and has made major progress in rewarding charitable giving for the not-for-profit charitable sector. These gains have been the result of years of collaboration with the federal government and of the tenacious efforts of the arts and culture sector in cooperation with the larger voluntary and charitable sector.
However, some very important and well identified measures to encourage creativity have yet to be adopted. Given the focus of this year’s consultation and the proven efficiency of such measures in other jurisdictions, we have restated them once again in our submission– e.g. copyright, residual rights and grants tax exemption, income averaging, access to “soft social benefits”.
However, as important as they may be, taxations measures are not sufficient to ensure that Canada enjoy the benefits of a knowledge economy. This is why our 2008 pre-budget submission also focuses on the issue of public funding for the arts and culture sector in Canada, particularly federal funding programs and institutions, as well as on a series of other CCA priorities identified after extensive consultation with our members, namely: further increases to the Canada Council’s budget, the long-awaited museum policy, copyright, cultural diplomacy, the Canadian Television Fund, etc.
A summary of CCA’s 2008 Federal Budget recommendations
Recommendation 1
The CCA recommends that the Standing Committee on Finance endorse a minimum $ 30 K exemption on revenue deriving from copyright and residual payments and complete tax exemption to grants to individual artists and creators.
Recommendation 2
The CCA recommends that the Standing Committee on Finance discuss the ongoing issue of income averaging with officials from the Department of Finance to determine if a new system could be developed to take into account the financial realities of artists and creators. The CCA also requests that the basic personal deduction limit for self-employed Canadians be raised to $12K.
Recommendation 3
The CCA invites the Standing Committee on Finance to recommend to the Minister of Finance that the 2008 federal budget make an additional recurrent increase of $ 20 million to the Canada Council budget beyond the $ 30 million recently confirmed to its base budget, with a view to eventually making its annual budget reach $300 million. Further, the CCA urges the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Canadian Heritage to confirm their intention to renew on a recurrent basis the “Tomorrow Starts Today” envelope of programs when it expires in 2009-10.
Recommendation 4
The CCA recommends that the Standing Committee on Finance urge the Minister of Finance to work with the Minister of Canadian Heritage so that the parameters of a new national museum policy be announced within the context of the 2008-09 federal budget.
Recommendation 5
Given the economic importance of copyright revenue to artists, creators and copyright owners, the CCA urges the Standing Committee on Finance to press the Ministers of Canadian Heritage and of Industry to expedite the introduction of the next phase of revisions to the Copyright Act.
Recommendation 6
The CCA urges the Standing Committee on Finance to recommend that new funds be allocated to the Department of Foreign Affairs to support the efforts of in the promotion of Canadian culture by foreign affairs staff members as well as those artists, creators and arts organizations building foreign audiences and revenue diversification.
Recommendation 7
The CCA urges the Standing Committee on Finance to press the Minister of Canadian Heritage to clarify immediately the criteria of the new program supporting the festivals announced in the 2007 federal budget.
Recommendation 8
The CCA recommends that the Standing Committee on Finance stress the importance of the Canadian Television Fund and the policies and objectives under which it currently operates be recognized by the government through the Minister of Canadian Heritage. The CCA further requests that any substantive change to these policies and objectives be the result of an open and transparent process consistent with the cultural objectives set by Parliament in the Broadcasting Act (1991)
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