2010 Pre-budget Consultations Report: Arts and Culture pushed to the back burner once again!

CCA Bul­letin 29/09

Decem­ber 11, 2009

 

 

 

Just the Facts

On Decem­ber 9, the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance pre­sented to the House of Com­mons its Report on the 2010 pre-budget con­sul­ta­tions titled A pros­per­ous and sus­tain­able future for Canada: needed fed­eral actions. Over 400 orga­ni­za­tions appeared in front of the Com­mit­tee in hear­ings held across the coun­try over the past three months, at a cost of “half a mil­lion dol­lars to tax­pay­ers”, accord­ing to the Lib­er­als. Six of the Report’s 158 pages are ded­i­cated to Arts and Culture.

While the doc­u­ment sum­ma­rizes the points made by some 35 arts, cul­ture and her­itage orga­ni­za­tions which made pre­sen­ta­tions or sent briefs, this report is remark­ably short on rec­om­men­da­tions con­cern­ing the cul­tural sec­tor.  Out of its 55 or so rec­om­men­da­tions, only two directly address the sector’s issues, and only in the broad­est terms:

“The fed­eral gov­ern­ment should make a sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment in cul­ture, for exam­ple by enhanc­ing the Canada Fea­ture Film Fund and the fea­ture length doc­u­men­tary fund, elim­i­nat­ing the Goods and Ser­vices Tax on books, pro­vid­ing a tax exemp­tion for copy­right roy­al­ties and increas­ing the bud­get of the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts.

More­over, the gov­ern­ment should work with non-national muse­ums with a view to devel­op­ing a fund­ing strat­egy for their long-term sus­tain­abil­ity.” (p. 83)

If arts and cul­ture were on the minds of politi­cians dur­ing the last fed­eral elec­tion, they now seem to have been rel­e­gated to the back burner once again. Quite obvi­ously, we still have a lot of work ahead to con­vince our MPs that the arts and cul­ture sec­tor is an impor­tant com­po­nent of the new cre­ative economy!

Tell me More

The Committee’s Report acknowl­edges the numer­ous points raised by cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing most of those included in the CCA brief. The Finance Com­mit­tee com­ments, in the fol­low­ing order, on “Tax Mea­sures; Fund­ing of Exist­ing Gov­ern­men­tal and Non-governmental Pro­grams and Orga­ni­za­tions; Print and Audio-visual Media; Tourism; Cul­tural Infra­struc­ture, Muse­ums and Libraries; Inter­na­tional Mar­ket­ing and Other Issues.”

One notes that mem­bers of the Finance Com­mit­tee from all par­ties are remark­ably coy on one of the main issues raised by a very large num­ber of indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions over the past year, namely the urgent neces­sity to re-invest in mar­ket devel­op­ment at home and abroad.  The open­ing para­graph of the sec­tion on arts and cul­ture states that:

“In addi­tion to the domes­tic con­tri­bu­tion that is made, artists are also ambas­sadors, and play a role in pro­mot­ing Cana­dian arts and cul­ture abroad, which can have tourism ben­e­fits.” (p.78)

Then the issue is rel­e­gated to the last but one point, before “Other Issues”:

“A num­ber of the Committee’s wit­nesses spoke about the mar­ket­ing efforts that are needed to sup­port artis­tic and cul­tural endeav­ours, both domes­ti­cally and inter­na­tion­ally, in order to pub­li­cize the nation’s dis­tinc­tive cul­tural brand. In not­ing that inter­na­tional activ­i­ties can be a vital com­po­nent of a sound busi­ness strat­egy for artis­tic and cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions, some wit­nesses sup­ported a mar­ket access and devel­op­ment pro­gram, while oth­ers advo­cated a mar­ket access or devel­op­ment and inno­va­tion pro­gram. The par­tic­u­lar exper­tise of the audi­ence and mar­ket devel­op­ment activ­i­ties of the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts was high­lighted by wit­nesses, who also advo­cated coop­er­a­tion by the Coun­cil with the Depart­ment of For­eign Affairs and Inter­na­tional Trade in respect of cul­tural activ­i­ties abroad.” (p. 82)

Con­trary to what one could have expected, the issue is not picked up by any of the oppo­si­tion par­ties! As a mat­ter of fact, the Lib­eral and the NDP Sup­ple­men­tary Com­ments do not men­tion cul­ture at all.

The Bloc Québé­cois is the only party to talk about cul­ture in its Dis­sent­ing Opin­ion; after stat­ing that “the cul­tural cuts made by the Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment con­sti­tute a direct attack on Que­bec cul­ture,” the Bloc goes on to say that “To put an end to the absur­dity of the fed­eral government’s hav­ing finan­cial and reg­u­la­tory pow­ers over Que­bec cul­ture, the Bloc Québé­cois sub­mit­ted rec­om­men­da­tions to the Com­mit­tee for trans­fer­ring fund­ing and pow­ers in this area to Que­bec so that we can con­trol our own com­mu­ni­ca­tions and cul­ture.”  What is more sur­pris­ing is  to see that the Bloc’s sec­tion enti­tled An Inno­v­a­tive Econ­omy does not acknowl­edge the role of arts and cul­ture in this new econ­omy of knowledge!

The Con­ser­v­a­tives’ Sup­ple­men­tary Com­ments are even more trou­bling. There does not appear to be any threats to cul­tural pro­grams in the upcom­ing bud­get (which could well be a pre-election bud­get) since it is said that “the Con­ser­v­a­tive Party believes that Bud­get 2010 should not be a typ­i­cal bud­get. Its cen­tral focus should be the con­tin­ued imple­men­ta­tion of Canada’s Eco­nomic Action Plan – it will be year two of our two-year Plan.”

But fol­low­ing com­ments are not likely to reas­sure any­body in the arts and cul­ture sector:

“Exam­ples of posi­tions we can­not endorse include a costly nation­al­ized day­care plan, an ill-con­ceived tax sub­sidy for a select few ‘des­ig­nated’ indi­vid­u­als, mas­sive new costs for an expanded Employ­ment Insur­ance pro­gram, res­ur­rec­tion of failed gov­ern­ment pro­grams, and many others. (…)

The Con­ser­v­a­tive Party does not feel it to be fis­cally pru­dent to under­take major new spend­ing ini­tia­tives. (…) Once the global recov­ery is secure, the Gov­ern­ment will need to begin the return to bal­anced bud­gets – not by rely­ing on hik­ing taxes, slash­ing ben­e­fits to Cana­di­ans, or down­load­ing on the provinces – but rather by respon­si­ble finan­cial man­age­ment.” (p.144 et al.)

What can I do?

MPs are going back to their rid­ings until Jan­u­ary 25. Make a point of send­ing yours your Season’s Greet­ings with a men­tion of the impor­tance of arts and cul­ture in the new econ­omy. Also, invite your mem­ber, regard­less of their party affil­i­a­tion, to join the newly formed Arts Cau­cus.

There clearly is a great need on the Hill for infor­ma­tion on the numer­ous con­tri­bu­tions the cul­tural sec­tor makes to Cana­dian society!