Federal Election 2011: Public Cultural Investments under Canada’s 40th Parliament

CCA Bul­letin 17/11

April 20, 2011

 

 

In 2008, the CCA pub­lished a bul­letin ana­lyz­ing the invest­ments made under Canada’s 39th Par­lia­ment in the arts, cul­ture and her­itage sec­tor. In order to give you a broad per­spec­tive, we used sev­eral years’ worth of bud­get analy­ses to explain fund­ing to the sec­tor. In today’s bul­letin, we will aim to do the same thing. By using fund­ing fig­ures from the Depart­ment of Her­itage, its agen­cies and pro­grams, we will break down themes sur­round­ing cul­tural spend­ing under Canada’s 40th Par­lia­ment. In this bul­letin, we will also out­line how fund­ing to Cana­dian insti­tu­tions and cul­tural pro­grams, along with gov­ern­ment processes such as Strate­gic Reviews, have impacted the over­all cul­tural bud­get of the fed­eral government.

In this analy­sis, the num­bers end with the 2010/11 fed­eral bud­get as that was the last bud­get that passed under the 40th Par­lia­ment. Though a 2011/12 fed­eral bud­get was tabled in March 2011, the bud­get died on the order paper once the writ was dropped and the cur­rent gen­eral fed­eral elec­tion was called. For that rea­son, we have not included the 2011/12 estimates.

What you want to know in a nutshell

Exclud­ing one-time fund­ing increases which were part of the 2009–2010 Canada Eco­nomic Action Plan, over­all fund­ing to key grants and con­tri­bu­tion pro­grams at the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage has remained rel­a­tively sta­ble over the past two years. If we include all one-time fund­ing ini­tia­tives, it would be legit­i­mate for the gov­ern­ment to claim that in nom­i­nal dol­lars at least, these bud­gets rep­re­sent the most ever for fund­ing arts, cul­ture and heritage.

As reflected in all of the CCA’s bud­get analy­ses since 2006, over this period, sta­ble fund­ing has been a gen­eral trend, even despite sig­nif­i­cant cuts which have had doc­u­mented impacts on parts of the sec­tor. Since 2009/10, many impor­tant pro­grams have received five-year fund­ing com­mit­ments. How­ever, once you dig deeper, it’s evi­dent that sta­ble fund­ing may be an ephemeral occur­rence due to the begin­ning and end of the Eco­nomic Action Plan. We have also seen sev­eral one-time only fund­ing mea­sures to sta­bi­lize cul­tural insti­tu­tions in the short term, even though they are in dire need of more long-term investment.

Olympic fund­ing sta­bi­lized the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Heritage’s bud­get dur­ing the period. How­ever, even with the end of the Olympics, we have not seen the return of any funds inter­nally to other arts, cul­ture and her­itage pro­grams, where some of the fund­ing orig­i­nated. Sep­a­rate from fund­ing, sev­eral pro­grams have under­gone changes with regards to their guide­lines (e.g. the changes to the Canada Peri­od­i­cal Fund). Some funds have been moved from one pro­gram to another or to another agency alto­gether (e.g. the pro­grams sup­port­ing music diver­sity). These changes have affected the abil­ity of many cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions to receive the fund­ing they pre­vi­ously relied upon. It’s clear that the gov­ern­ment will have to cut deeply across pro­grams to help bal­ance the bud­get, now that it has for­saken a sig­nif­i­cant amount of rev­enue through reduced taxes.

What to expect down the line

There is legit­i­mate rea­son to believe that this state of sta­ble fund­ing may not con­tinue. Even if the Cana­dian econ­omy seems to be per­form­ing bet­ter than most in the G-8, the 2008/09 reces­sion and ongo­ing global eco­nomic insta­bil­ity are gen­er­at­ing con­sid­er­able uncer­tainty. In the short term, fed­eral expen­di­tures have been frozen, which means that depart­ments, crown cor­po­ra­tions and agen­cies must find inter­nal resources to pay for increased salary and oper­a­tional expenses.

In its 2011 bud­get, the out­go­ing gov­ern­ment pre­sented a roadmap to a bal­anced bud­get, includ­ing $17.6 bil­lion in expen­di­ture reduc­tions over five years. This will require real spend­ing cuts. Mov­ing away from a Strate­gic Review exer­cise every four years, the 2011 bud­get announced a com­pre­hen­sive one-year Strate­gic and Oper­at­ing Review across the entire gov­ern­ment in 2011-12. About $80 bil­lion of direct pro­gram spend­ing will be reviewed with the objec­tive of achiev­ing at least $4 bil­lion in ongo­ing annual sav­ings by 2014–15, or 5% of the review base. The review will place par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on gen­er­at­ing sav­ings from oper­at­ing expenses and improv­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity, while also exam­in­ing the rel­e­vance and effec­tive­ness of pro­grams. This means that Her­itage and its asso­ci­ated pro­grams, agen­cies and crown cor­po­ra­tions will again be under scrutiny. Based on 2010/11 bud­get fig­ures, this could trans­late to invest­ment cuts of at least $175 mil­lion to arts, cul­ture and heritage.

If you want to know more, by theme

The fol­low­ing sec­tions out­line major themes the CCA has iden­ti­fied as areas of focus or con­cern when exam­in­ing the multi-year fund­ing tables found below.

• 
  

  One-time fund­ing, stim­u­lus spend­ing and five-year commitments

• 
  

  Chang­ing fund­ing guidelines

• 
  

  No fund­ing for devel­op­ing inter­na­tional mar­kets for Cana­dian culture

• 
  

  Social ben­e­fits and tax measures

• 
  

  Invest­ing in audio­vi­sual production

• 
  

  CBC financ­ing

• 
  

  Canada’s national muse­ums

• 
  

  The Canada Prizes

• 
  

  The impact of the Olympics on cul­tural spending

• 
  

  Strate­gic Review processes, bud­get freezes and the Strate­gic and Oper­at­ing Review

One-time fund­ing, stim­u­lus spend­ing and five-year commitments

The 40th Par­lia­ment passed the government’s first bud­get in 2009/10, with a cul­tural bud­get of $3,524.4 mil­lion. In 2010/11, cul­tural spend­ing was $3,421.2 mil­lion.*

Com­pared to 2009/10, the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Heritage’s 2010/11 cul­tural bud­gets declined by $103.2 mil­lion, mainly due to the end of spe­cific project fund­ing and admin­is­tra­tive trans­fers of respon­si­bil­i­ties. Reduc­tions of about $50.3 mil­lion are due to the con­clu­sion of the 2010 Van­cou­ver Olympic and Par­a­lympic Games. Another $24.9 mil­lion reduc­tion stems from the sun set­ting on the Urban Mul­ti­pur­pose Abo­rig­i­nal Youth Cen­tres com­po­nent of the Abo­rig­i­nal Peo­ples’ Pro­gram. Finally, a $28.7 mil­lion reduc­tion stems from the trans­fer of the Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Pro­gram to the Depart­ment of Cit­i­zen­ship and Immi­gra­tion Canada.

How­ever, this appar­ent decline in over­all bud­gets should be inter­preted with cau­tion, espe­cially given the high level of spend­ing in 2009/10 due to addi­tional one-time fund­ing asso­ci­ated with the Van­cou­ver Olympics and one-time ini­tia­tives con­nected with the Eco­nomic Action Plan (e.g. an addi­tional $30 mil­lion to the Canada Cul­tural Spaces Fund). Inter­est­ingly enough, the most sub­stan­tial one-time invest­ment in cul­tural activ­i­ties came through the Depart­ment of Indus­try in the form of the Mar­quee Tourism Events Pro­gram, which gave $100 mil­lion over two years to local fes­ti­vals. This pro­gram ended along with Canada’s Eco­nomic Action Plan.

Fig­ures in 2010/11 include $15 mil­lion in one-time fund­ing pro­vided to four of the national muse­ums in April 2010: the Cana­dian Museum of Civ­i­liza­tion ($6.3 mil­lion), the National Gallery of Canada ($2 mil­lion), the Cana­dian Museum of Nature ($3 mil­lion) and the Canada Sci­ence and Tech­nol­ogy Museum ($3.7 mil­lion). This fund­ing for the 2010/11 fis­cal year was intended to help “address oper­at­ing pres­sures” these national muse­ums faced in light of the eco­nomic downturn.

Unlike the approach taken under Canada’s Eco­nomic Action Plan from 2006 to 2008 — which involved car­ry­ing out one or two-year fund­ing com­mit­ments — in 2009/10, the gov­ern­ment com­mit­ted to fund­ing sev­eral pro­gram areas for a five-year period. While such long-term com­mit­ments must be taken on with cau­tion as bud­gets are voted on a year-to-year basis, this actu­ally enabled a strong mea­sure of sta­bil­ity for the sec­tor dur­ing the eco­nomic down­turn, set­ting many orga­ni­za­tions’ minds at ease. The total five-year spend­ing com­mit­ment from 2010/11 to 2014/15 was $642 million:

• $33.8 mil­lion annu­ally to the Canada Cul­tural Invest­ment Fund (for­merly the Cana­dian Arts and Her­itage Sus­tain­abil­ity Program);
• $30 mil­lion in annual fund­ing to the Canada Cul­tural Spaces Fund (for­merly Cul­tural Spaces Canada);
• $18 mil­lion per year to the Canada Arts Pre­sen­ta­tion Fund (the pro­vi­sion­ally renamed Arts Pre­sen­ta­tion Canada Pro­gram; includ­ing base fund­ing to this pro­gram, the annual total is $33.4 million);
• $27.6 mil­lion per year for the Canada Music Fund;
• An ongo­ing com­mit­ment of an addi­tional $25 mil­lion yearly to the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts (main­tain­ing the Council’s total annual appro­pri­a­tion to $181 mil­lion for the next five years);
• A follow-through on a bud­get 2009 com­mit­ment: $24.1 mil­lion in annual fund­ing for five years to the Canada Arts Train­ing Fund (for­merly the National Arts Train­ing Con­tri­bu­tion Program);
• The Canada Book Fund (for­merly the Book Pub­lish­ing Indus­try Devel­op­ment Pro­gram) was renewed at its pre­vi­ous level of $36.7 mil­lion in 2009/10 for a period of five years to 2014/15. The pro­gram received $750,000 in addi­tional fund­ing in the 2009/10 sup­ple­men­tary estimates.

Chang­ing fund­ing guidelines

While fund­ing to arts and cul­ture has remained fairly sta­ble in most areas, many orga­ni­za­tions have been affected by changes in eli­gi­bil­ity cri­te­ria and by the shift­ing of funds from one pro­gram to another. For exam­ple, in 2010 the gov­ern­ment announced that the cri­te­ria for receiv­ing fund­ing from the Canada Peri­od­i­cal Fund (CPF) would dif­fer from the pre­vi­ous Cana­dian Mag­a­zine Fund (CMF) and the Pub­li­ca­tions Assis­tance Pro­gram (PAP — also known as the “postal sub­sidy”), which it replaced on April 1, 2010.

The CPF pro­vides finan­cial assis­tance to the Cana­dian mag­a­zine and non-daily news­pa­per indus­tries so that they can con­tinue to pro­duce and dis­trib­ute Cana­dian con­tent in the face of sys­temic dis­ad­van­tages in the marketplace.

The cre­ation of the CPF was ini­tially announced on Feb­ru­ary 17, 2009, reveal­ing the estab­lish­ment of a stream­lined pro­gram in sup­port of Cana­dian mag­a­zines and com­mu­nity news­pa­pers. The CPF main­tained exist­ing lev­els of finan­cial sup­port for Cana­dian mag­a­zines and com­mu­nity newspapers–a total of $75.5 mil­lion annu­ally. This includes the annual $15 mil­lion “postal sub­sidy” that was once the respon­si­bil­ity of Canada Post.

The fund­ing of the CPF has not changed, but the rules have. Under the new pro­gram, pub­li­ca­tions whose cir­cu­la­tion lev­els fall under 5,000 are no longer eli­gi­ble. The main vic­tims of this clause are lit­er­ary and arts pub­li­ca­tions which fall under this thresh­old. While they remain eli­gi­ble for the Busi­ness Inno­va­tion com­po­nent of the new fund, they have lost the addi­tional finan­cial sup­port they once received under the pre­vi­ous regime. Excep­tions to this change include pub­li­ca­tions for Abo­rig­i­nal, ethno-cultural and offi­cial lan­guage com­mu­ni­ties. Other exemp­tions include agri­cul­tural pub­li­ca­tions such as The West­ern Pro­ducer, Cana­dian Cat­tle­men and Grainews.

Another exam­ple of changes to fund­ing can be seen with the 2009 can­cel­la­tion of fund­ing for the record­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion of “spe­cial­ized music”. This fund­ing was for­merly admin­is­tered by the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts, but was then trans­ferred to FACTOR/MusicAction. The sec­tor was thrilled to hear about the five-year renewal for the Canada Music Fund and the need for dig­i­tal and inter­na­tional mar­ket devel­op­ment. Those two sec­tors of activ­ity cer­tainly ben­e­fited from the increased fund­ing, but crit­ics have said that this finan­cial injec­tion into the sec­tor was done at the expense of a strate­gic invest­ment in Cana­dian cul­tural diver­sity. The musi­cal diver­sity pro­gram admin­is­tered by the Canada Coun­cil fos­tered the devel­op­ment of new forms of music which, while not nec­es­sar­ily com­mer­cially viable imme­di­ately, could even­tu­ally become so.

No fund­ing for devel­op­ing for­eign mar­kets for Cana­dian culture

In 2008, the sec­tor saw size­able cuts through the abo­li­tion of two strate­gi­cally impor­tant pro­grams:  Trade Routes ($9 mil­lion) and Pro­mArt ($10.6 mil­lion, when one con­sid­ers the first cut of $5.8 mil­lion announced in 2006). The impact of the abo­li­tion of these pro­grams on Quebec’s cul­tural sec­tor has been doc­u­mented by CINARS. The Que­bec gov­ern­ment stepped in with $3 mil­lion annu­ally to soften the blow

Since 2008, the sec­tor has asked in vain for the cre­ation and imple­men­ta­tion of new pro­grams to help develop mar­kets abroad for our cul­tural prod­ucts and help enhance Canada’s image within the inter­na­tional community.

Social Ben­e­fits and Tax Measures

The 2010/11 fed­eral bud­get announced that cer­tain Employ­ment Insur­ance ben­e­fits would be extended to self-employed work­ers. Specif­i­cally, self-employed indi­vid­u­als have the option of reg­is­ter­ing for the EI pro­gram in order to receive mater­nity, parental, sick­ness and com­pas­sion­ate care benefits.

Given the high per­cent­age of self-employment in the cul­tural sec­tor, this change may be of ben­e­fit to some work­ers. For oth­ers, how­ever, the pro­gram may not be advan­ta­geous. For exam­ple, once reg­is­tered, work­ers can­not opt out. Under­stand­ably, the gov­ern­ment will seek to avoid hav­ing work­ers opt into the sys­tem on a short-term basis. How­ever, this rule reduces flex­i­bil­ity for cul­tural work­ers in the long term. Fur­ther­more, even if artists are no longer cre­at­ing, they must con­tinue in the pro­gram as long as they con­tinue to receive income for their past works. More­over, when draw­ing on EI ben­e­fits (e.g., parental ben­e­fits) and not actively cre­at­ing works, any income artists receive dur­ing this period for past works (e.g. sale of their work, roy­al­ties, pub­lic lend­ing rights, etc.) will reduce their EI benefits.

Invest­ing in audio­vi­sual production

In 2009, the gov­ern­ment melded the Cana­dian Tele­vi­sion Fund (CTF) and the Canada New Media Fund (CNMF) to cre­ate the Canada Media Fund (CMF), whose man­date is to advance media pro­duc­tion on var­i­ous dis­tri­b­u­tion plat­forms. Bud­get 2009 com­mit­ted $135 mil­lion in gov­ern­ment fund­ing to this new pro­gram for each of two years, roughly the com­bined total of the two pre­vi­ous funds ($120 mil­lion for the CTF and $14.2 mil­lion for the CNMF). Total fund­ing to the Canada Media Fund in 2010/11 is $350 mil­lion: $135 mil­lion from the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage, and the remain­der ($215 mil­lion) from cable and satel­lite broad­cast dis­tri­b­u­tion under­tak­ings (BDU’s) man­dated by the CRTC to con­tribute to the fund.

CBC financ­ing

CBC bud­gets have not changed over the past five years. Like all gov­ern­ment depart­ments and agen­cies, begin­ning last year, for a three-year period, the CBC will have to absorb nego­ti­ated salary increases and infla­tion on goods and ser­vices. The appar­ent sta­bil­ity in fund­ing shown in the main esti­mates does not reflect the seri­ous impact that the reces­sion has had on the com­mer­cial rev­enue of CBC tele­vi­sion ser­vices, which rep­re­sent a third of the organization’s over­all budget.

If the gov­ern­ment promised five-year sta­bil­ity to a num­ber of key invest­ment pro­grams in arts and cul­ture in its 2009-10 bud­get, it made no such com­mit­ments to the pub­lic broad­caster. The annual $60 mil­lion top up that the Cor­po­ra­tion has received since 2001-02 has been renewed only on an annual basis, despite sev­eral argu­ments that it be made part of base fund­ing, includ­ing a rec­om­men­da­tion from the her­itage stand­ing com­mit­tee (with dis­sent­ing opin­ion from the gov­ern­men­tal com­mit­tee mem­bers).  In 2009, the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage also declined to assist the CBC with bridge financ­ing as the broad­caster expe­ri­enced a bud­get short­fall of $170 mil­lion owing to a decline in adver­tis­ing rev­enue. This short­fall led to the elim­i­na­tion of 800 posi­tions and numer­ous pro­grams in French and Eng­lish radio and tele­vi­sion. The CBC also had to sell off assets to raise the funds it needs.

The CBC (along with the Canada Coun­cil, the National Film Board and Tele­film) went through the Strate­gic Review process for bud­get 2010-11, and was asked to iden­tify 5% of its bud­get deemed low pri­or­ity. This could have amounted to a cut of roughly $50 mil­lion, but no fund­ing was real­lo­cated out­side of the orga­ni­za­tion, with the gov­ern­ment stat­ing that real­lo­ca­tions were not nec­es­sary “as pro­grams deliv­ered by these orga­ni­za­tions are aligned with the pri­or­i­ties of Canadians”.

Canada’s national museums

In 2009/10 and 2010/11 the gov­ern­ment made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the pri­vate sector-led Cana­dian Museum for Human Rights. The 2009/10 bud­get com­mit­ted $26.7 mil­lion to the museum, the major­ity of which ($25.2 mil­lion) was allo­cated via the sup­ple­men­tary esti­mates for oper­at­ing and cap­i­tal expen­di­tures. The $55 mil­lion of fund­ing for 2010/11 was bro­ken down as fol­lows in the main esti­mates: $15.9 mil­lion in oper­at­ing fund­ing and $40 mil­lion in cap­i­tal expenditures.

In 2009, the bud­get of Library & Archives Canada was, in part, under­writ­ten with funds avail­able within the orga­ni­za­tion because the gov­ern­ment can­celled con­struc­tion of the Por­trait Gallery of Canada (approx­i­mately $29 mil­lion) in 2008 due to “global eco­nomic insta­bil­ity”. The Por­trait Gallery has since been down­graded to a pro­gram ele­ment of Library & Archives. While the Por­trait Gallery of Canada Pro­gram was listed among Library and Archives’ pri­or­i­ties in its 2010/11 Report on Plans and Pri­or­i­ties, the organization’s strat­egy for the gallery focused on trav­el­ling exhi­bi­tions and online approaches.

As men­tioned above, in April 2010, the gov­ern­ment pro­vided one-time fund­ing of $15 mil­lion to four of Canada’s national muse­ums. In 2010, the gov­ern­ment also granted Pier 21 Museum in Hal­i­fax national museum sta­tus, only the sec­ond such insti­tu­tion out­side the national cap­i­tal region, after Cana­dian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg.

The Canada Prizes

As reported in the CCA’s 2009 fed­eral bud­get analy­sis, the gov­ern­ment announced to everyone’s sur­prise that it would allo­cate $25 mil­lion to an endow­ment fund for the cre­ation of the Canada Prizes for the Arts and Cre­ativ­ity. Ini­tially tar­get­ing for­eign artists, the Prizes were to be admin­is­tered through a new entity and were linked to the Toronto Lumi­nato Fes­ti­val.

Con­fronted with con­sid­er­able crit­i­cism from the sec­tor who pointed to more press­ing needs (like invest­ing in mar­ket devel­op­ment at home and abroad), the gov­ern­ment quickly sent the project back to the draw­ing board. In early May 2010, the Min­is­ter of Cana­dian Her­itage announced that the Canada Coun­cil would admin­is­ter the Prizes, which were recast to rec­og­nize out­stand­ing Cana­dian artis­tic achieve­ments and help brand Canada as a cen­tre of excel­lence.   In June 2010, the gov­ern­ment appointed an advi­sory panel to pre­pare rec­om­men­da­tions respect­ing the para­me­ters of the prizes. The panel pre­sented its report to the Min­is­ter at the end of the sum­mer 2010. How­ever, there was no men­tion of the Canada Prizes in the 2011 fed­eral bud­get tabled in March 2011 or in the 2010/11 main estimates.

The impact of the Olympics on cul­tural spending

As men­tioned pre­vi­ously, begin­ning with the 2009/10 to 2010/11 period, spend­ing was set to decrease on all three strate­gic out­comes in the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage: by $36.6 mil­lion for the first out­come (“Cana­dian artis­tic expres­sions and cul­tural con­tent are cre­ated and acces­si­ble at home and abroad.”), $76.9 mil­lion for the sec­ond out­come (“Cana­di­ans share, express and appre­ci­ate their Cana­dian iden­tity.”) and $72.9 mil­lion for the third out­come (“Cana­di­ans par­tic­i­pate and excel in sport.”), for an over­all decrease of $186 mil­lion. The largest decreases are slated for two pro­gram activ­i­ties: 1) Pro­mo­tion and attach­ment to Canada ($53.5 mil­lion), largely due to the con­clu­sion of the Van­cou­ver 2010 Olympic and Par­a­lympic Games (Torch Relay, $24.1 mil­lion and Open­ing Cer­e­monies, $17.4 mil­lion) and Inter­na­tional Expo­si­tions ($11.2 mil­lion), and 2) Sport ($72.5 mil­lion), again due to con­clu­sion of the Van­cou­ver 2010 Olympic and Par­a­lympic Games.

With respect to the decline in sport fund­ing, it should be recalled that some of this fund­ing was sourced through real­lo­ca­tion of cul­tural spend­ing to sport in the Department’s 2007 Strate­gic Review. As such, this fund­ing was essen­tially ‘lost’ to the arts and cul­ture sec­tor in the first Strate­gic Review process (see next section).

Strate­gic Review processes and bud­get freezes

In 2007, the gov­ern­ment devel­oped a new Strate­gic Review process, which involves ongo­ing expen­di­ture reviews to eval­u­ate whether pro­grams are achiev­ing their objec­tives, whether they are effec­tively admin­is­tered and whether they are in line with Cana­di­ans’ pri­or­i­ties and fed­eral respon­si­bil­i­ties.

The Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage, fed­eral muse­ums and Library and Archives of Canada were among the sev­en­teen orga­ni­za­tions par­tic­i­pat­ing in the first Strate­gic Review in 2007. While the $15 mil­lion in ‘sav­ings’ iden­ti­fied by fed­eral muse­ums was rein­vested over three years in their cap­i­tal and oper­at­ing expen­di­tures, the sav­ings from the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage – includ­ing some arts and cul­ture fund­ing cuts like Pro­mArt and Trade Routes – were redi­rected toward three pro­grams: the 2010 Olympic and Par­a­lympic torch relays, the Road to Excel­lence for sum­mer Olympic ath­letes, and the Offi­cial Lan­guages Action Plan (com­po­nents of the sec­ond and third  strate­gic out­comes of the Department).

Pub­lic spend­ing in the arts and cul­ture sec­tor was not under scrutiny in the Strate­gic Review under­taken for bud­get 2009, but it was for the 2010 Strate­gic Review. The CBC, Canada Coun­cil, National Film Board and Tele­film Canada all under­went Strate­gic Reviews for bud­get 2010 to iden­tify the 5% of their bud­gets that was ‘low pri­or­ity’. For­tu­nately, Bud­get 2010 noted that “real­lo­ca­tions were not nec­es­sary as pro­grams deliv­ered by these orga­ni­za­tions are aligned with the pri­or­i­ties of Canadians”.

In Bud­get 2010, the gov­ern­ment announced that Strate­gic Reviews would hence­forth result in hard cuts: funds are not real­lo­cated, but rather cut com­pletely from gov­ern­ment spend­ing. Bud­get 2010 also announced that gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tions would have to absorb the 1.5% increase in annual wages for the fed­eral pub­lic ser­vice as well as infla­tion on goods and ser­vices. Depart­ments would be required to fund these increases by real­lo­cat­ing within their oper­at­ing bud­gets. The Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage indi­cates that the total amount of these addi­tional expenses for 2010/11 is $2.0 million. The Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage is sched­uled for a Strate­gic Review in 2011/12, the results of which will be announced in Bud­get 2012. The Depart­ment indi­cated that no deci­sions have been made regard­ing the par­tic­i­pa­tion of exter­nal stake­hold­ers in this review process.

How­ever, the 2011 Strate­gic Review process may well be replaced by a dif­fer­ent exer­cise as the gov­ern­ment attacks the deficit. In the 2011 fed­eral bud­get (which died on the order paper when the writ was dropped) the gov­ern­ment announced a com­pre­hen­sive one-year Strate­gic and Oper­at­ing Review across the entire gov­ern­ment in 2011/12. The Strate­gic and Oper­at­ing Review would exam­ine direct pro­gram spend­ing, as appro­pri­ated by Par­lia­ment. About $80 bil­lion of direct pro­gram spend­ing will be reviewed with the objec­tive of achiev­ing at least $4 bil­lion in ongo­ing annual sav­ings by 2014–15 or 5% of the review base. The review will place par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on gen­er­at­ing sav­ings from oper­at­ing expenses and improv­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity, while also exam­in­ing the rel­e­vance and effec­tive­ness of pro­grams. This review process is surely to appear again in the next bud­get if the 41st Par­lia­ment sees a Con­ser­v­a­tive minor­ity or major­ity gov­ern­ment, in which case the entire Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage Port­fo­lio will be under scrutiny.

* This num­ber includes the Main Esti­mates and Sup­ple­men­tary Esti­mates A/B/C for 2010/11

 

Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage Grants and Con­tri­bu­tions

Pro­gram	2006-07   (After Supp Esti­mates A/B)	2007-08   (After Supp Esti­mates A/B)	2008-09   (Main Esti­mates and Supp)	2009-10   (After Supp A/B/C)	2010-11   (Main Esti­mates and Supp A)
Arts and Her­itage Sus­tain­abil­ity Program
Capac­ity Building	6,310,043	6,310,043	6,134,043	4,365,479	Pro­gram com­po­nent discontinued
Endow­ment Incentives	14,884,420	14,884,420	14,884,420	14,884,000	Pro­gram com­po­nent became part of Canada Cul­tural Invest­ment Fund
Sta­bi­liza­tion Funds	626,760	626,760	626,760	Pro­gram com­po­nent discontinued
Net­work­ing Initiatives	1,000,000	1,000,000	1,000,000	1,000,000	Pro­gram com­po­nent discontinued
Arts Pre­sen­ta­tion Canada Pro­gram (Now: Canada Arts Pre­sen­ta­tion Fund)	21,418,998	20,761,498	28,362,112	28,362,112	27,878,855
Build­ing Com­mu­ni­ties through Arts & Heritage		3,092,000	7,900,000	17,655,000	19,155,000
Cel­e­brate Canada! Merged with Cel­e­bra­tion and Com­mem­o­ra­tion Pro­gram in 2009/10  Cel­e­bra­tion and Com­mem­o­ra­tion Program	12,951,037	21,988,600	31970426 , 36,336,423	45,657,286	11,829,533
Cul­tural Cap­i­tals of Canada	3,862,680	3,862,680	3,862,680	3,862,680	Pro­gram became part of Canada Cul­tural Invest­ment Fund
Cul­tural Spaces Canada Pro­gram (Now: Canada Cul­tural Spaces Fund)	26,901,423	30,442,423	29,342,801	58,459,560	26,949,850
National Arts Train­ing Con­tri­bu­tion Pro­gram (Now: Canada Arts Train­ing Fund)	15,903,920	16,618,000	16,703,920	23,542,520	22,742,440
Canada Cul­tural Invest­ment Fund (for­merly Cul­tural Cap­i­tals of Canada and Endow­ment Com­po­nent of Arts & Her­itage Sus­tain­abil­ity Program)				18,746,680	25,182,705
Her­itage
Com­mer­cial Her­itage Prop­er­ties Incen­tive Fund	9,873,000
Muse­ums Assis­tance Program	12,023,284	10,098,000	14,445,845	14,446,000	14,576,284
Cul­tural Industries
Book Pub­lish­ing Indus­try Devel­op­ment Pro­gram (Now: Canada Book Fund)	39,764,798	38,094,798	37,637,660	37,387,660	36,666,301
Canada Music Fund	22,889,658	22,889,658	22,614,982	23,364,082	25,828,331
Cana­dian Tele­vi­sion Fund	119 950 000	119,950,000	119,950,000	119,950,000	Now: Canada Media Fund: 119,950,000 + 14,196,077
Canada New Media Fund	17,032,000	14,025,000	14,196,077
Canada Mag­a­zine Fund	16,067,998	15,567,998	15,381,182	14,881,638	Now: Canada Peri­od­i­cal Fund 74,774,598
Pub­li­ca­tions Assis­tance Program	45,400,000	45,400,000	45,400,000	60,400,000
Other Grants and Contributions
Sport Grants & Contributions
Ath­lete Assis­tance Program	27,000,000	27,000,000	26,676,000	26,677,000	27,000,000
Sport Sup­port Program	97,825,345	101,847,481	109,563,183	101,118,596	117,000,972
Games’ Host­ing Program	167,585,000	148,823,284	78,914,404	80,784,404	16,315,575
Cel­e­bra­tion and Com­mem­o­ra­tion Program				45,657,286	11,829,553
Offi­cial Languages
Enhance­ment of Offi­cial Lan­guages Program	109,219,100	108,923,289	111,020,927	112,010,600	111,523,131
Devel­op­ment of Offi­cial Lan­guage Com­mu­ni­ties Program	214,828,820	216,344,930	241,113,473	241,695,100	226,031,984
Abo­rig­i­nal Peo­ples’ Program	66,787,262	66,203,732	57,757,982	59,362,911	56,214,907

 

Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage, Agen­cies and Crown Cor­po­ra­tions

(Fig­ures in mil­lions of dollars)

Orga­ni­za­tion	Total   Esti­mates 2006/07 (Passed by 39th Parliament)	Total Esti­mates 2007/08 (Passed by 39th Parliament)	Total Esti­mates 2008/09 (Passed by 39th Parliament)	Total Esti­mates 2009/10 (Passed by 40th Parliament)	Total Esti­mates 2010/11
Depart­ment of Cana­dian Heritage	1,459.50	1,440.50	1,450.00	1,448.10	1,336.40
Canada Coun­cil for the Arts	171.4	181.8	182.1	181.6	181.8
Cana­dian Broad­cast­ing Corporation	1,114.00	1,104.00	1,157.50	1,112.60	1,137.10
Library and Archives of Canada	114	154.8	164.9	128.3	127.8
National Arts Centre	56.3	55.9	52.5	35.2	36.1
National Gallery of Canada	46.6	51.4	55.5	50	50.9
Cana­dian Museum of Human Rights			5	26.7	55.9
Cana­dian Museum of Civilization	61.5	61.9	69.3	62.7	71.2
Cana­dian Museum of Nature	59.6	84.9	62.3	32.4	33.3
National Museum of Sci­ence and Technology	30.6	32.1	35.5	34.6	35.3
National Film Board of Canada	70.9	67.1	67	65.1	68.5
Tele­film Canada	105.2	105.2	107.8	104.7	105.7
TOTAL	3,288.90	3,339.90	3,409.40	3,524.40	3,421.20