Some good news for Canada’s arts and culture sector announced in 2006 Federal Budget

Ottawa, ON (May 2, 2006) — The Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA) is encour­aged by the announce­ment of new monies for the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts con­tained in the 2006 Fed­eral Bud­get unveiled today by the Hon. Jim Fla­herty, Min­is­ter of Finance.

This announce­ment comes on the heels of months of sus­tained advo­cacy by mem­bers of the country’s arts and cul­tural sec­tor, who were seek­ing a dou­bling of the Canada Council’s annual bud­get. Though the fig­ure of $50 mil­lion over the next two fis­cal years falls well short of the tar­get, it is nev­er­the­less a wel­come development.

“Though it is far too early to uncork the cham­pagne, the CCA sees this as the first step on the part of a new gov­ern­ment that is try­ing to be atten­tive to the sector’s long-standing call for sta­ble, increased, multi-year pub­lic fund­ing for arts and cul­ture,” says Alain Pineau, National Direc­tor of the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts. “Now our work begins to ensure this $50 mil­lion is secured as per­ma­nent, sus­tained fund­ing and to make the advo­cacy case for the still required increases in the very near future.”

Unfor­tu­nately, what today’s fed­eral bud­get does NOT con­tain is any news related to the CCA’s other cur­rent advo­cacy pri­or­i­ties. For instance, there is no men­tion of a new fed­eral muse­ums pol­icy, nor is there an announce­ment regard­ing addi­tional monies to the Cana­dian Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (CBC), par­tic­u­larly for its regional pro­gram­ming plan. Regret­tably, an announce­ment last Novem­ber to allo­cate addi­tional monies to the cul­tural pro­grams housed at the Depart­ment of For­eign Affairs did not re-materialize either. The CCA has also called on the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to deter­mine the needs for increased fund­ing for the var­i­ous port­fo­lio agen­cies of the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage; this rec­om­men­da­tion also went unheeded.

Addi­tion­ally, CCA’s var­i­ous 2006 bud­get appeals in the area of tax­a­tion and tax cred­its went unad­dressed for the time being, though dur­ing the fast-track con­sul­ta­tion process, Min­is­ter Fla­herty has at least opened the door to hav­ing future dis­cus­sions with the CCA on these issues. The CCA asks the gov­ern­ment to rein­state income aver­ag­ing for self-employed Cana­di­ans whose income fluc­tu­ates dras­ti­cally from year-to-year, as artists and cul­tural work­ers com­prise the fastest-growing part of the country’s 21st Cen­tury post-industrial labour force and to imple­ment a tax­a­tion exemp­tion on artists’ income, includ­ing copy­right income. Last, the CCA had encour­aged the gov­ern­ment to expand its planned tax credit of $500 for par­ents of young Cana­di­ans under the age of 16 who enroll their chil­dren in pro­grams pro­mot­ing phys­i­cal activ­i­ties, to also include a tax credit to cover chil­dren par­tic­i­pat­ing in arts and cul­tural activities.

Canada’s artists and cul­tural work­ers earned an aver­age of $23,500 in 2001 and should there­fore ben­e­fit in one way or another from the var­i­ous tax relief mea­sures con­tained in the 2006 bud­get. It is too soon to assess the poten­tial impact of these pro­pos­als, which include: changes to the per­sonal income tax rate, as well as tax cred­its for trades people’s tool expenses and schol­ar­ship and bur­sary income, among other mea­sures.

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