CCA BULLETIN 30/07

August 16, 2007

Just the facts

The Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA) has filed yes­ter­day its sub­mis­sion to the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance in the con­text of the 2008 pre-budget con­sul­ta­tion: A Cre­ative Cana­dian Econ­omy: tax­a­tion and beyond.

The CCA has been a par­tic­i­pant in pre-budget con­sul­ta­tions for over twenty years. Dur­ing this time, a broad series of rec­om­men­da­tions have been put for­ward to the Min­is­ter of Finance and the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance. Last year , the CCA stressed the impor­tance of reflect­ing the chang­ing real­i­ties of the Cana­dian labour force through mea­sures to pro­vide greater access to social ben­e­fits and secu­rity to self-employed Cana­di­ans, which is the case for a major­ity of work­ers in the cul­tural sec­tor. Many of these rec­om­men­da­tions were restated in the response of the CCA to the Advan­tage Canada frame­work later released by the Min­is­ter of Finance.

This year, the Com­mit­tee has set the theme for the con­sul­ta­tion as “The Tax Sys­tem the Coun­try needs for a pros­per­ous future”.

The CCA rec­og­nizes that over the past twenty-five years, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment has pro­vided impor­tant tax­a­tion ben­e­fits to self-employed artists and cre­ators and has made major progress in reward­ing char­i­ta­ble giv­ing for the not-for-profit char­i­ta­ble sec­tor. These gains have been the result of years of col­lab­o­ra­tion with the fed­eral gov­ern­ment and of the tena­cious efforts of the arts and cul­ture sec­tor in coop­er­a­tion with the larger vol­un­tary and char­i­ta­ble sector.

How­ever, some very impor­tant and well iden­ti­fied mea­sures to encour­age cre­ativ­ity have yet to be adopted. Given the focus of this year’s con­sul­ta­tion and the proven effi­ciency of such mea­sures in other juris­dic­tions, we have restated them once again in our sub­mis­sion– e.g. copy­right, resid­ual rights and grants tax exemp­tion, income aver­ag­ing, access to “soft social benefits”.

How­ever, as impor­tant as they may be, tax­a­tions mea­sures are not suf­fi­cient to ensure that Canada enjoy the ben­e­fits of a knowl­edge econ­omy. This is why our 2008 pre-budget sub­mis­sion also focuses on the issue of pub­lic fund­ing for the arts and cul­ture sec­tor in Canada, par­tic­u­larly fed­eral fund­ing pro­grams and insti­tu­tions, as well as on a series of other CCA pri­or­i­ties iden­ti­fied after exten­sive con­sul­ta­tion with our mem­bers, namely: fur­ther increases to the Canada Council’s bud­get, the long-awaited museum pol­icy, copy­right, cul­tural diplo­macy, the Cana­dian Tele­vi­sion Fund, etc.

A sum­mary of CCA’s 2008 Fed­eral Bud­get recommendations

Rec­om­men­da­tion 1

The CCA rec­om­mends that the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance endorse a min­i­mum $ 30 K exemp­tion on rev­enue deriv­ing from copy­right and resid­ual pay­ments and com­plete tax exemp­tion to grants to indi­vid­ual artists and creators.

Rec­om­men­da­tion 2

The CCA rec­om­mends that the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance dis­cuss the ongo­ing issue of income aver­ag­ing with offi­cials from the Depart­ment of Finance to deter­mine if a new sys­tem could be devel­oped to take into account the finan­cial real­i­ties of artists and cre­ators. The CCA also requests that the basic per­sonal deduc­tion limit for self-employed Cana­di­ans be raised to $12K.

Rec­om­men­da­tion 3

The CCA invites the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance to rec­om­mend to the Min­is­ter of Finance that the 2008 fed­eral bud­get make an addi­tional recur­rent increase of $ 20 mil­lion to the Canada Coun­cil bud­get beyond the $ 30 mil­lion recently con­firmed to its base bud­get, with a view to even­tu­ally mak­ing its annual bud­get reach $300 mil­lion. Fur­ther, the CCA urges the Min­is­ter of Finance and the Min­is­ter of Cana­dian Her­itage to con­firm their inten­tion to renew on a recur­rent basis the “Tomor­row Starts Today” enve­lope of pro­grams when it expires in 2009-10.

Rec­om­men­da­tion 4

The CCA rec­om­mends that the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance urge the Min­is­ter of Finance to work with the Min­is­ter of Cana­dian Her­itage so that the para­me­ters of a new national museum pol­icy be announced within the con­text of the 2008-09 fed­eral budget.

Rec­om­men­da­tion 5

Given the eco­nomic impor­tance of copy­right rev­enue to artists, cre­ators and copy­right own­ers, the CCA urges the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance to press the Min­is­ters of Cana­dian Her­itage and of Indus­try to expe­dite the intro­duc­tion of the next phase of revi­sions to the Copy­right Act.

Rec­om­men­da­tion 6

The CCA urges the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance to rec­om­mend that new funds be allo­cated to the Depart­ment of For­eign Affairs to sup­port the efforts of in the pro­mo­tion of Cana­dian cul­ture by for­eign affairs staff mem­bers as well as those artists, cre­ators and arts orga­ni­za­tions build­ing for­eign audi­ences and rev­enue diversification.

Rec­om­men­da­tion 7

The CCA urges the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance to press the Min­is­ter of Cana­dian Her­itage to clar­ify imme­di­ately the cri­te­ria of the new pro­gram sup­port­ing the fes­ti­vals announced in the 2007 fed­eral budget.

Rec­om­men­da­tion 8

The CCA rec­om­mends that the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance stress the impor­tance of the Cana­dian Tele­vi­sion Fund and the poli­cies and objec­tives under which it cur­rently oper­ates be rec­og­nized by the gov­ern­ment through the Min­is­ter of Cana­dian Her­itage. The CCA fur­ther requests that any sub­stan­tive change to these poli­cies and objec­tives be the result of an open and trans­par­ent process con­sis­tent with the cul­tural objec­tives set by Par­lia­ment in the Broad­cast­ing Act (1991)