The Economic Spring for Culture

CCA Bul­letin 05/12

March 28, 2012

There is sum­mer, the har­vest sea­son, the cold sea­son and the sea­son of bud­gets. Over the last two weeks we have read four provin­cial bud­gets and tomor­row the fed­eral bud­get will come out. This bul­letin is to do a quick recap of the place that cul­ture and arts hold in the most recent provin­cial bud­gets pre­sented in spring 2012, those in Que­bec, Saskatchewan, Ontario and New Brunswick.

Que­bec: steady for now

Caught in the mael­strom of the stu­dent strike and the snare of a deficit that Que­bec can not slow down the Lib­eral gov­ern­ment has made choices. In this con­text, we can say that cul­ture is doing fairly well in the bud­get tabled on March 20. The gov­ern­ment rec­og­nizes that cul­ture does not receive a large share of the bud­get but wants to at least main­tain gains. The main fig­ures include:

• $60 mil­lion to fund Québec’s cul­tural her­itage over the next eight years;
• $11 mil­lion to muse­ums in all regions of Quebec;
• The Arts Coun­cil (CALQ) will receive $4.5 mil­lion over three years to sup­port the action plan for the pro­fes­sional dance sec­tor, the big win­ner of the 2012–13 bud­get; and,
• $20 mil­lion over the next five years will be devoted to the imple­men­ta­tion of the dig­i­tal strat­egy for culture.

Cul­ture Mon­treal reacted cau­tiously empha­siz­ing that noth­ing is planned for the imple­men­ta­tion of Agenda 21. All the same the orga­ni­za­tion wel­comes the increase in Finan­cial Assis­tance to tourism fes­ti­vals and events, the bonus tax cred­its for film pro­duc­tion, as well as assis­tance in the pro­duc­tion of shows and production

Saskatchewan: we’re freezing!

On March 21, it was the turn of the cul­tural com­mu­nity in Saskatchewan to find out what the provin­cial Con­ser­v­a­tive government’s bud­get reserved for them. If some in Que­bec found the Charest government’s efforts timid, our west­ern col­leagues were even more dis­ap­pointed. The bud­get of the Saskatchewan Arts Board remains frozen at $6.4 mil­lion. Even still, the bud­get within the depart­ment of Tourism, Parks, Cul­ture and Sport to sup­port cul­ture in Saskatchewan has decreased by $247 thou­sand to $993 thousand.

The film and audio­vi­sual sec­tor had the biggest shock how­ever. The Brad Wall gov­ern­ment has decided to abol­ish the tax credit for audio­vi­sual pro­duc­tions, in place since 1998, to achieve a poten­tial sav­ing of $8 mil­lion per year. Saskatchewan will be the sole province that offers no tax credit for audio­vi­sual pro­duc­tion. Work­ers in this sec­tor have already begun to explore job oppor­tu­ni­ties in Man­i­toba, which could ben­e­fit from the abo­li­tion of the pro­gram in their neigh­bor­ing province.

The Saskatchewan Arts Alliance finds some com­fort in the fact that the Active Fam­i­lies Ben­e­fit has been expanded to include chil­dren from 0 to 18 years old and increased by $3 mil­lion. Recall that the pro­gram pro­vides tax ben­e­fits up to $150 per child for par­tic­i­pa­tion in cul­tural, sport­ing or recre­ational activ­i­ties. Pre­vi­ously, the ben­e­fit was lim­ited to 6 to 14 year olds.

Ontario: cul­ture is under the weather

Ontario is fac­ing an unprece­dented deficit of $ 15.3 bil­lion which, left to itself could reach $24.6 bil­lion by 2014–2015. Herein lies the chal­lenge fac­ing the minor­ity Lib­eral gov­ern­ment. Even if many of the cuts announced are in pub­lic ser­vices, it is clear that arts and cul­ture will con­tribute to mop­ping up the deficit.

Indeed, the Lumi­nato fes­ti­val will suf­fer cuts of 23 per­cent ($1.5 mil­lion this year and $2 mil­lion next year). Given the bud­get of $13 mil­lion annu­ally, the festival’s lead­ers have become philoso­phers admit­ting that it was not a mat­ter of life or death.

Some of the highlights:

• Cuts of 1%, impact­ing the Art Gallery of Ontario, the McMichael Cana­dian Art Col­lec­tion, The Ontario Her­itage Trust, and the Royal Ontario Museum. All together the 8 agen­cies will have to replace a total of $900 000 in funding;
• The Enter­tain­ment and Cre­ative Clus­ter Part­ner­ships Fundwill end one year ear­lier than planned;
• Tax cred­its for cul­tural indus­tries will be maintained;
• Fund­ing to the Arts Coun­cil of Ontario, OMDC and the Tril­lium Foun­da­tion is capped; and,
• The fate of TVOn­tario remains unclear. For now, they were asked to find new rev­enue sources.

New Brunswick: a chilly spring

David Alward’s Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment has also filed its bud­get for 2012–2013 in which they plan to reduce the expected deficit of $448 mil­lion this year to $183 mil­lion by the end of the next fis­cal year.

They will seek to “change the cul­ture of the New Brunswick Pub­lic Ser­vice”, as in Ontario, offi­cials and depart­ments will bear the brunt of deficit reduction.

In terms of invest­ments, the provin­cial gov­ern­ment will invest about $105 mil­lion in 2012–2013 to honor the leg­isla­tive and gov­ern­ment com­mit­ments, includ­ing what seems the first pri­or­ity, afford­able hous­ing which receives $10.3 million .

There is lit­tle invest­ment in cul­ture. Accord­ing to the esti­mates, the revised bud­get ded­i­cated to cul­ture goes from $10.02 mil­lion to $10.48 million:

• $2 mil­lion to pro­mote innovation;
• $1 mil­lion for of devel­op­ment of dig­i­tal media.

The gov­ern­ment is also invest­ing $2.5 mil­lion for lit­er­acy in pri­mary school.

Soon, the CCA will also present a syn­the­sis of all the provin­cial, ter­ri­to­r­ial, and fed­eral bud­gets seen from the per­spec­tive of arts, cul­ture and her­itage. Are we expe­ri­enc­ing a cul­tural spring? This is doubt­ful because the weather remains cool!