CCA RELEASES STUDY OF GOVERNMENT SPENDING ON CULTURE

Bul­letin 31/05

Ottawa, July 8, 2005 — The Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts is pleased to announce the release of a new report on gov­ern­ment fund­ing for the arts.  The report, titled “Gov­ern­ment Spend­ing on Cul­ture in Canada, 1992–93 to 2002-03 ”, was com­mis­sioned by the CCA from Hill Strate­gies Research Inc.

The report exam­ines spend­ing on cul­ture by fed­eral, provin­cial, and munic­i­pal gov­ern­ments in Canada, focus­ing largely on changes in spend­ing between the years 1992–93 and 2002-03.  It also pro­vides a more detailed overview of gov­ern­ment cul­tural spend­ing for fis­cal year 2002-03.

Using Sta­tis­tics Canada’s Sur­vey of Gov­ern­ment Expen­di­tures on Cul­ture as a ref­er­ence, the infor­ma­tion is exam­ined by cul­tural sub­sec­tor, by level of gov­ern­ment, by province, and in rela­tion to pop­u­la­tion size.  Sev­eral key find­ings emerge, includ­ing the following:

o     Total gov­ern­ment spend­ing on cul­ture, includ­ing trans­fers, was $7.4 bil­lion in 2002-03.  Of that total, her­itage and libraries received $3.7 bil­lion (50%), the cul­tural indus­tries received $2.5 bil­lion (34%), mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism and other cul­tural activ­i­ties received $690 mil­lion (9%), and the arts received the small­est share at $550 mil­lion (7%).

o     The con­tri­bu­tions of each level of gov­ern­ment to the $7.4 bil­lion in cul­tural spend­ing in 2002-03 were as follows:

- Fed­eral:  $3.4 bil­lion (46% of total, or $109 per capita);

- Provin­cial:  $2.1 bil­lion (28% of total, or $67 per capita); and — Munic­i­pal:  $1.9 bil­lion (25% of total, or $60 per capita).

o     Of the $550 mil­lion spent by all lev­els of gov­ern­ment on the arts in 2002-03:

- $243 mil­lion was spent by the fed­eral gov­ern­ment (44%, or $8 per capita);

- $283 mil­lion was spent by provin­cial gov­ern­ments (51%, or $9 per capita); and — $24 mil­lion was spent by munic­i­pal gov­ern­ments (4%, or $1 per capita).

o     Per capita gov­ern­ment cul­tural spend­ing increased in four provinces between 1992–93 and 2002-03:  New Brunswick, Nova Sco­tia, Saskatchewan and Que­bec.  Per capita

gov­ern­ment cul­tural spend­ing decreased in the other six provinces: Alberta, Ontario, British Colum­bia, Prince Edward Island, Man­i­toba and New­found­land and Labrador.

o     After adjust­ing for infla­tion, total gov­ern­ment spend­ing on cul­ture decreased by 0.3% between 1992–93 and 2002-03.  In comparison:

- The num­ber of cul­tural work­ers increased by 20% between 1991 and 2001; — The num­ber of artists increased by 29% between 1991 and 2001;

- Con­sumer spend­ing on cul­ture increased by 19% between 1997 and 2003; — The pop­u­la­tion of Canada grew by 11% between 1992 and 2002; and

- Canada’s Gross Domes­tic Prod­uct grew by 39% between 1992 and 2002.

These com­par­isons clearly demon­strate that gov­ern­ment spend­ing has failed to keep pace with sub­stan­tial growth in the cul­ture sec­tor over the past decade.  They also reveal the rel­a­tively low level of sup­port for the arts.

Over the past 60 years, gov­ern­ments have played a fun­da­men­tal role in the growth of the arts, cul­ture and cul­tural indus­tries in Canada.  They have pro­vided the solid foun­da­tion on which many of our most impor­tant arts orga­ni­za­tions and cul­tural indus­tries have been built.  Inad­e­quate lev­els of gov­ern­ment invest­ment will have a grave impact on the cul­ture sector’s abil­ity to cre­ate, pro­duce, dis­trib­ute, and pre­serve Canada’s cul­tural heritage.

The CCA/Hill Strate­gies report can be found in its entirety on the CCA web­site.  It con­tains a great wealth of detailed infor­ma­tion on tri-level gov­ern­ment fund­ing for cul­ture in Canada.  Fur­ther analy­sis of the report’s find­ings will be pro­vided in a forth­com­ing CCA Bul­letin.  In the mean­time, the CCA urges its mem­bers to review the report online as it is an excel­lent resource for advocacy.