CCA Bulletin 21/06

FROM THE DESK OF ALAIN PINEAU
National Director
Canadian Conference of the Arts

April 20, 2006

Pre-budget Consultation: Finance Minister Flaherty expresses interest in at least two of the CCA's priorities!

The CCA participated Wednesday in a meeting with Federal Finance Minister James Flaherty, Parliamentary Secretary Diane Ablonczy and Finance Department Officers, in the context of the pre-budget consultations launched by the Minister on April 6.

The meeting regrouped representatives from 18 national organizations,  from the education, child and health care sectors and the public service, the CCA being the only one in the mix concerned with arts and culture. The two hour meeting was rigorously structured, each organization having three minutes to present their respective budget priorities and a final minute at the end of the meeting to wrap up or answer a point raised by the Minister!

Minister Flaherty opened the meeting by saying that he was aware of the difficulties posed by such time constraints, not only within the meeting itself, but also with preparing his first budget. He indicated that this consultation was just the beginning of a broader consultation concerning the following budget, where more issues beyond the well-known top five priorities of his government could be addressed. Amongst some general concerns, he expressed the government's desire to exercise frugality in federal spending, whose growth of 15% over the past year is deemed irresponsible and unsustainable.

Kindly but firmly kept in line by Diane Ablonczy's use of her new stop watch, each of the 18 spokespersons obviously kept to the essential requests of their respective sectors. However, a good number of major issues were addressed one way or another by one or many of the presenters, whether it be the largely supported need for a properly financed and regulated national child care program, the inappropriateness of a GST rebate when so much government investment is required in so many areas, the risks of "over-accountability" for the not-for-profit sectors, etc.

On behalf of the CCA, I re-tabled the submission we made last October in the round of pre-budget consultations conducted by the previous government. Not surprisingly, our priorities have not changed much over the past six months: as reconfirmed at our March Conference, they are related to increased and stable funding and to taxation issues.

Under funding:

• The CCA fully supports the Canadian Arts Coalition’s request for at least a doubling of the Canada Council’s budget over three years;
• The CCA requests that the new federal museum policy, long in the making, be put in place and adequate funding for museums and art galleries across the country be provided;
• The CCA considers the CBC part of the backbone of the Canadian cultural sector. We support its plan for regional programming in radio and television broadcasting.

Under taxation:

• The CCA fully endorses the government's promise to give a $500 tax credit to parents of children under 16 years old who enrol them in physical activity programs. We urge that this credit be extended to all arts activity programs for children under 16 because of the well-documented benefits of individual and social wellness accruing from exposure to the arts;
• The CCA urges the Minister to implement income averaging for self-employed Canadians, including artists and cultural workers. The growing number of self-employed people in the Canadian labour market who face fluctuating income levels would greatly benefit from such a measure of social equity.
• Finally, the CCA urges the government to put in place policies to exempt all (or a maximum level) of creators’ copyright and patent royalties from taxation, as recently proposed by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, measures which would greatly contribute to Canadian creativity and international competitiveness. 

While our most immediate priority (the Canada Council’s budget increase) simply drew the comment that they had heard abundantly about this one from Heritage Minister Oda, I am pleased to report that in his summing up, the Minister publicly committed to meeting with the CCA again in the near future to further explore the $500 tax credit for children’s arts training (to parallel physical activities) and the exemption of copyright revenue from taxation.

We will of course keep pressing the government on those two issues, but will also continue advocating for our other top priorities, the Canada Council's budget increase remaining on top of the list. Stay tuned for more information on the upcoming budget… and on the preparation for the next one!