BUDGET SCORE: PRUDENCE $4 BILLION; CTF $100 MILLION
Ottawa , March 23, 2003 — It’s clear that culture is not on the new government’s radar! Even though there was news to announce, it was hidden deep within the budget plan.
In November the Department of Canadian Heritage revealed the Tomorrow Starts Today initiative would continue at full funding for the 2004-05 fiscal year, and the Main Estimates (released 23 February) appear to support this. That message was excellent news for the cultural sector, which the government chose to ignore in a Budget speech that had little other mention of culture, arts, or heritage. The fate of the sector af ter the 2004-05 fiscal year remains clouded in obscurity.
Although CCA presented its pre-Budget submission as usual last fall, Budget consultations this year were halted by the prorogation of Parliament; there was therefore no report from the Standing Committee on Finance and no recommendations to the Department of Finance.
The Main Estimates also indicated an amount of $200 million “for programs that support a cohesive and creative Canada such as the Canada Television Fund, Official Languages programs, and several programs for Aboriginal peoples”. While there is no indication of how this will be parsed out, this is probably the Tomorrow Starts Today funding (one further year) and the top-up for the CTF. As usual, CCA will be embarking on a detailed Budget analysis over the coming weeks, in an attempt to untangle the line items, monies, and other arcane mentions in the Main Estimates — this document should be available towards the end of April.
CCA was expecting at least some mention of funding for the international convention to enshrine the rights (and obligations) of governments to enact cultural policies that promote and develop national cultural diversity, given that the convention was mentioned in the Speech from the Throne. The funding for this work, which will af fect the budget planning for the International Network for Cultural Diversity (an initiate of the CCA ), may yet be discovered when the budget analysis is complete.
Canadian Television Fund
The only direct mention relating to the cultural sector was in reference to the Canadian Television Fund whose funding will be restored, although the Budget documents imply this will only be as of the 2005-06 fiscal year ($100 million). The Main Estimates show the CTF at $63 million for 2004-05; however, CCA has learned that this figure will be topped up to $100 million.
Support for Voluntary Sector
This year’s Budget contains monies for certain initiatives which will benefit the non-profit sector and the social economy:
• increased support for the Voluntary Sector Initiative ($6 million over two years) to “strengthen the sector’s capacity to collaborate and innovate”, and to “support a stronger voice for philanthropic and charitable organizations in local, regional and national public policy dialogue”;
• $12 million, in each of two years, for changes to the regulatory framework for registered charities, based on the recommendations of the Joint Regulatory Table (an element of the Voluntary Sector Initiative), including
• a new compliance regime,
• a more accessible appeals regime, and
• more transparency and greater accessibility to information;
• a new not-for-profit Corporations Act to “build a solid foundation upon which Canada’s social economy can continue to develop”;
• development of a bank for the charitable sector to “broaden the range of financial instruments available to the sector”. This will be established with private and voluntary sector support, rather than funding from the government.
There may be access to funding for cultural organizations under the infrastructure money in the new deal for communities, although no specifics are given.
A worrisome theme is the commercialization of research. The government will be diverting monies into improving “our commercialization performance by increasingly transforming research outcomes into economic benefits for Canadians”. This is a worthy outcome of research but it should never be the sole raison d’être. To quote author Silver Donald Cameron, during the CCA ‘s national policy conference in Halifax last November: “Is it possible for innovation to flower when its freedom is curtailed and its objectives are narrowly defined at the outset? Ask the scientists, who are deeply worried that corporate funding of research means the neglect of all lines of inquiry that are unlikely to lead quickly to commercial applications. If Einstein’s lab had relied on the arms industry, would its funding have been continued? And yet, its eventual result was the greatest ‘innovation’, in armaments, of all time: the nuclear bomb.”
The CCA , its members, and a coalition involving the Canada Council, UNESCO and some of its members, are working together to develop a national strategy for arts and education. This work is fueled by discussions at CCA ‘s last policy conference which linked the importance of a creative education to the development of an innovative workforce. The government has not yet made the link between creativity and innovation and continues to pour money into innovation without regard to the creative infrastructure. For example three federal granting councils* received huge increases bringing their combined budgets to $1.4 billion, a 90% increase from 1997–98, while the Canada Council struggled to maintain a hard won $25 million increase.
* Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada , and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada