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Telefilm Canada: The Impacts Remain Difficult to Evaluate

In 2011–2012 Tele­film received $105.7 mil­lion from the Her­itage Depart­ment. For 2012–2013, their bud­get will be cut $10.6 mil­lion over 3 years, a reduc­tion of 10%. Since last sum­mer, the gov­ern­ment has been telling agen­cies that they will need to cut 5–10% from their bud­gets. If observers weren’t sur­prised by the cuts to CBC – they were announced and expected from many mem­bers of gov­ern­ment – the cuts to Tele­film and NFB caused a bit more sur­prise. Some have won­dered if the other audio-visual...

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Special Budget Edition: A First Look at the Federal Budget

We are very proud to present this spe­cial fed­eral bud­get edi­tion. Our in depth bud­get analy­sis will be pub­lished in a few weeks when the Her­itage Min­is­ter pub­lishes the esti­mates and report on plans and pri­or­i­ties. Nor­mally the gov­ern­ment announces the plans and pri­or­i­ties before the fed­eral bud­get drops, but not this year. Spe­cific impacts are begin­ning to emerge as to which pro­grams are being main­tained, but there is no guar­an­tee that pri­or­i­ties will remain the same. Sev­eral...

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National Arts Center

Of the eight orga­ni­za­tions that were cut in the recent fed­eral bud­get, the reduc­tions to the National Arts Cen­tre have received very lit­tle reac­tion. The cut­backs to the orga­ni­za­tion may have been over­shad­owed by the much larger cuts to the CBC and the Her­itage Depart­ment and the fact that fund­ing was main­tained for the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts. However the cuts of $1.9 mil­lion over 3 years add up to just over 5% of the NAC’s bud­get — and this does not include hav­ing to cover infla­tion on...

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The National Film Board

One of the 2012–13 Budget’s main dis­ap­point­ments for the cul­tural sec­tor were the cuts imposed on the audio­vi­sual sec­tor. “Effi­cien­cies” or not, the reper­cus­sions from the cuts to CBC, Tele­film and the National Film Board will have impor­tant con­se­quences for the pro­duc­tion food chain of this impor­tant sec­tor of cul­tural expression. Let’s look at the case of the National Film Board which will lose 10% of its bud­get ($6.7 mil­lion) on top of hav­ing to absorb infla­tion on goods,...

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CBC: The Cuts Expected by All

If the fed­eral bud­get con­tained some sur­prises, the cuts to the CBC weren’t one of them. It has been a num­ber of months that we have been expect­ing these cuts to the crown cor­po­ra­tion. Min­is­ter James Moore has con­tin­ued to reaf­firm that the CBC needs to make cuts between 5–10% like all the other agen­cies. You didn’t need to be psy­chic to pre­dict the cuts of approx­i­mately $115 mil­lion. You also have to add to this the oblig­a­tion to absorb the increased costs of doing busi­ness, just like at the...

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National Museums Saved

In the her­itage sec­tor, muse­ums were cer­tainly priv­i­leged by Min­is­ter Flaherty’s budget. Not only did we see the bud­get for national muse­ums renewed with­out any cuts, but the gov­ern­ment has reserved a beau­ti­ful trib­ute to all Cana­dian museums. “Cana­di­ans are proud of their muse­ums. Taken together, national and local muse­ums in com­mu­ni­ties all across Canada are some of the best in the world.” The gov­ern­ment responded to the major­ity of the expec­ta­tions of the national...

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Canada Council for the Arts

The great news for the cul­tural sec­tor in the new fed­eral bud­get is def­i­nitely that the Canada Council’s bud­get was kept intact at $181 mil­lion. The news was met with delight by the cul­tural sec­tor. We had pre­pared for sig­nif­i­cant cuts in all sec­tors and the cul­tural milieu was on the alert, despite reas­sur­ances from the Her­itage Min­is­ter. We would like to point out that Canada Council’s bud­get accounts for 0.08% of the total fed­eral bud­get. [1] Despite hav­ing their bud­get main­tained,...

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Art + Law Conference

Art + Law Conference

Those of you who fol­low us on Twit­ter and/or Face­book may have already heard of the upcom­ing Art + Law con­fer­ence orga­nized by CARFAC National that will be held in Ottawa from June 8–10. From read­ing our bul­letins and Mag­a­zine, you would also know that we have been par­tic­u­larly active on the copy­right file dur­ing the last few years in Canada and inter­na­tion­ally, avidly watch­ing, report­ing and analysing the devel­op­ments of C-11. It seemed nat­ural then that we would part­ner with CARFAC and...

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March 27th is World Theatre Day

This year John Malkovich is the mes­sage author of the 50th World The­atre Day. Mes­sage of the 50th anniver­sary of World The­atre Day “I’m hon­ored to have been asked by the Inter­na­tional The­atre Insti­tute ITI at UNESCO to give this greet­ing com­mem­o­rat­ing the 50th anniver­sary of World The­atre Day. I will address my brief remarks to my fel­low the­atre work­ers, peers and comrades. May your work be com­pelling and orig­i­nal. May it be pro­found, touch­ing, con­tem­pla­tive, and unique. May...

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Study on Employment Standards and Human Resource Management Tools

On March 7, 2012, the Inde­pen­dent Media Arts Alliance (IMAA) pub­lished a report on employ­ment stan­dards and human resources in artist-run media arts orga­ni­za­tions. It appears that base salaries in these cen­ters are lower than those in other not-for-profit sectors. The study has found that: Employ­ees are young and highly skilled Two thirds of employ­ees are required to work over­time, up to 10 to 20 hours; Spend­ing on ben­e­fits is low; Employee turnover is high, with over 40% of all employ­ees in their...

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