CCA Analysis of the 2006–2007 Supplementary Estimates (A)

CCA Bul­letin 48/06

Novem­ber 17, 2006

Just the Facts

The 2006–2007 Sup­ple­men­tary Esti­mates (A) were tabled in the House of Com­mons recently. Of inter­est to mem­bers and sup­port­ers of the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA) is the com­bi­na­tion of new fund­ing, as well as inter­nal trans­fers of exist­ing fund­ing, announced for the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage (DCH), includ­ing its agen­cies and crown corporations.

The new fund­ing received is fairly min­i­mal — out­side of about $5 mil­lion to Library and Archives and the National Film Board (NFB) com­bined, the rest of the fund­ing is com­prised either of money that was already announced (the $20 mil­lion increase to the Canada Coun­cil), money that was owing to the sec­tor in any event (the $9.7 to the Book Pub­lish­ing Indus­try Devel­op­ment Pro­gram [BPIDP] that has been antic­i­pated since the tabling of the Main Esti­mates), or new fund­ing for pur­poses out­side of arts, her­itage and the cul­tural indus­tries. This last cat­e­gory includes items such as: $30 mil­lion for the Global Cen­tre for Plu­ral­ism, $12 mil­lion for the Games Host­ing Pro­gram, and the roughly $12 mil­lion for mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism related pro­grams and initiatives.

Thus, the bulk of the fund­ing changes announced in the sup­ple­men­tary esti­mates ($16 mil­lion) rep­re­sent fund­ing trans­fers from one part of the DCH port­fo­lio to another, which are detailed in the fol­low­ing text and the linked tables posted at CCA’s @gora.

Tell Me More.

Table 1 sum­ma­rizes the new fund­ing and fund­ing trans­fers pre­sented in the Sup­ple­men­tary Esti­mates. Vir­tu­ally all fund­ing trans­fers rep­re­sent trans­fers within the DCH port­fo­lio (i.e. trans­fer of fund­ing from one pur­pose to another). The pur­poses of the new or trans­ferred funds shown in Table 2 are as fol­lows:

Arts

Canada Coun­cil for the Arts : The $20 mil­lion in addi­tional fund­ing announced in Bud­get 2006 appears in the Sup­ple­men­tary Esti­mates (this is nor­mal as the Main Esti­mates did not reflect the $20 mil­lion — bud­get announce­ments are typ­i­cally rolled in to the Sup­ple­men­tary Esti­mates when they are tabled). There is an addi­tional $965,000 in new fund­ing to the Coun­cil: the devel­op­ment of Offi­cial Lan­guage Minor­ity Com­mu­ni­ties ($600,000), the Canada Music Fund ($250,000) and the Com­mis­sion inter­na­tionale du théâtre fran­coph­one ($115,000).

National Arts Cen­tre : Trans­fer of $2.1 mil­lion made up of $1 mil­lion for the Québec Scène Fes­ti­val, $ 600,000 for ‘the cre­ation of cul­tural con­tent on-line and other dig­i­ti­za­tion projects’, $350,000 for the devel­op­ment of Offi­cial Lan­guage Minor­ity Com­mu­ni­ties and $168,000 for the Gov­er­nor Gen­eral Per­form­ing Arts Awards.

Broad­cast­ing and Audio­vi­sual Production

Cana­dian Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion : Trans­fer of $2 mil­lion for ‘the cre­ation of cul­tural con­tent on-line and other dig­i­ti­za­tion projects’ and an inter­nal real­lo­ca­tion of $33.7 mil­lion ‘for cap­i­tal projects related to Eng­lish and French lan­guage radio and tele­vi­sion services’.

National Film Board of Canada : Trans­fer of $2.9 mil­lion for ‘the cre­ation of cul­tural con­tent on-line and other dig­i­ti­za­tion projects’ ($2.5 mil­lion) and the devel­op­ment of Offi­cial Lan­guage Minor­ity Com­mu­ni­ties ($420,000). The NFB also received new appro­pri­a­tions of $3.2 mil­lion, which rep­re­sent a carry for­ward of $3.4 mil­lion in oper­at­ing bud­get, less $190,000 in 2005 Expen­di­ture Review Com­mit­tee Sav­ings (the Sup­ple­men­tary Esti­mates do not indi­cate what the NFB cut back as part of this expen­di­ture review process).

Tele­film Canada : Trans­fer of $20.4 mil­lion out of Tele­film Canada to DCH for the Cana­dian Tele­vi­sion Fund. This money now appears as a DCH expen­di­ture on the Cana­dian Tele­vi­sion Fund, a result of the imple­men­ta­tion of the new and sim­pli­fied CTF gov­er­nance frame­work, as announced in the recently pub­lished DCH Plans and Pri­or­i­ties. Tele­film Canada also received a $550,000 trans­fer for the devel­op­ment of Offi­cial Lan­guage Minor­ity Communities.

Her­itage

Cana­dian Museum of Civ­i­liza­tion : Trans­fer of $1,554,250 for ‘the cre­ation of cul­tural con­tent on-line and other dig­i­ti­za­tion projects.’

National Museum of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­ogy : Trans­fer of $323,620 for ‘the cre­ation of cul­tural con­tent on-line and other dig­i­ti­za­tion projects.’

Library and Archives of Canada : Trans­fer of $3.5 mil­lion, for ‘the cre­ation of cul­tural con­tent on-line and other dig­i­ti­za­tion projects’ ($2.5 mil­lion), preser­va­tion and acces­si­bil­ity of Canada ‘s films ($550,000) and the cre­ation of the Dic­tio­nary of Cana­dian Biogra­phies ($400,000). The orga­ni­za­tion received a new appro­pri­a­tion for an oper­at­ing bud­get car­ry­ing for­ward ($2.2 mil­lion) and col­lect­ing, pro­cess­ing, etc., the polit­i­cal papers of the Right Hon­ourable Paul Mar­tin ($481,000). The new appro­pri­a­tions were par­tially sup­ported with fund­ing avail­able at Library and Archives from the 2005 Expen­di­ture Review process ($610,000) and exist­ing fund­ing to the orga­ni­za­tion ($626,000).

Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage (DCH)

The Depart­ment has received an addi­tional $73.8 mil­lion in Voted Appro­pri­a­tions for a vari­ety of pur­poses. Most of the new monies received accrue to pur­poses other than arts or cul­tural indus­tries, with more than half of the new monies allot­ted to the new Global Cen­tre for Plu­ral­ism ($30 mil­lion), ‘which advo­cates plu­ral­ism as a foun­da­tion for good gov­er­nance and human devel­op­ment through research in and dia­logue about eth­nic, cul­tural, lin­guis­tic and reli­gious diver­sity,’ (p.131, Sup­ple­men­tary Esti­mates) and to sport ($12 mil­lion to the Games’ Host­ing Program).

A num­ber of smaller fund­ing allot­ments appear for pro­grams and ini­tia­tives asso­ci­ated with mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism: fund­ing to the Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Pro­gram ($5.9 mil­lion), fund­ing to sup­port pro­grams deal­ing with dis­crim­i­na­tion faced by var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties dur­ing wartime and in immi­gra­tion ($1.96 mil­lion for the National His­tor­i­cal Recog­ni­tion Pro­gram, $2.7 mil­lion in sym­bolic pay­ments as a result of the Chi­nese Head Tax, $1.4 mil­lion to Com­mu­nity His­tor­i­cal Recog­ni­tion Program).

The Book Pub­lish­ing Indus­try Devel­op­ment Pro­gram (BPIDP) received an addi­tional $9.67 mil­lion, which brings its fund­ing level in line with pre­vi­ous years’ fund­ing. As men­tioned in the CCA’s 2006 Bud­get analy­sis, the 2006–2007 Main Esti­mates brought a decline for BPIDP fund­ing, but sources in the depart­ment indi­cated at the time that fund­ing would be forth­com­ing in the sup­ple­men­tary esti­mates, which has turned out to be the case.

Of note, some of these new appro­pri­a­tions have been defrayed by gov­ern­men­tal mea­sures: $1.75 mil­lion in the 2005 Expen­di­ture Review Com­mit­tee process and $6.12 mil­lion in the 2006 Expen­di­ture Restraint initiative

It is impor­tant to note that the Sup­ple­men­tary Esti­mates do not pro­vide infor­ma­tion as to the “losers” in this process, i.e., the pro­grams or other bud­get line items that were cut back as a result of these expen­di­ture reductions.

Other Expen­di­tures

The Sup­ple­men­tary Esti­mates A also include an addi­tional $100,000 to the Depart­ment of For­eign Affairs and Inter­na­tional Trade (DFAIT) for grants in aid of cul­tural rela­tions, namely in sup­port of the Inter­na­tional Cen­tre of Film for Chil­dren and Young People.