CCA’S BUDGET ANALYSIS NOW AVAILABLE

Ottawa , May 20th 2004 — The CCA ‘s in-depth analy­sis of the Feb­ru­ary 2004 fed­eral Bud­get is now avail­able on our web­site in Eng­lish and in French.

Enti­tled “Dear Pru­dence”, with ref­er­ence to both the Bea­t­les and the Budget’s focus on fis­cal pro­bity, the analy­sis con­tains much to smile about, at least in the short term, and answers many of the ques­tions about fund­ing that those in the sec­tor ask on a daily basis.   This annual analy­sis makes the con­nec­tion between Bud­get allo­ca­tions and pol­icy direc­tions, and does not shy away from ask­ing the hard ques­tions where dis­crep­an­cies arise.

“Dear Pru­dence” is par­tic­u­larly timely given that an elec­tion call is expected any day.   It pro­vides detail about the cur­rent work­ings of the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage for use in advo­cacy efforts at the national, local, and dis­ci­pli­nary lev­els, and acts as a com­pan­ion piece to the advo­cacy toolkit already devel­oped by the CCA (and avail­able at www.ccarts.ca ).

The analy­sis provides

• the “big pic­ture” of fed­eral fund­ing lev­els to arts and her­itage: Where is the money going?   How will expen­di­ture review af fect us?   How are indi­vid­ual pro­grammes working?
• recent fund­ing and orga­ni­za­tional changes: What is the future direc­tion of the Department?
• a detailed exam­i­na­tion of cru­cial fund­ing issues, trends, chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties on a sub-sectoral basis, with ref­er­ence to spe­cific programmes:
• cur­rent devel­op­ments in the sec­tor beyond fed­eral fund­ing, includ­ing char­i­ta­ble sta­tus, work­place skills strat­egy, and the social economy.

In a related news story…

CCA has learned that DCH ‘s attempt to secure the Tomor­row Starts Today fund­ing on an ongo­ing basis has been delayed at least until the fall of the year. Although the funds are in place for this fis­cal year (2004–05), the Depart­ment wanted to ensure that funds were firmly in place for the fore­see­able future before the elec­tion process got under­way. It seems that this process was cut short when the House recessed and the next oppor­tu­nity to get approval for the pack­age will not come until the new par­lia­ment con­venes in the fall of the year. This will put DCH ‘s request for funds in the queue with com­pet­i­tive requests from all other departments.

The poten­tial loss of this fund­ing pack­age worth about $560 mil­lion over three years could have seri­ous reper­cus­sions for the cul­tural sec­tor as a whole. (See the bud­get analy­sis for details.) Sev­eral arts groups have recently sus­tained bud­get cuts result­ing from the loss of fund­ing through the spon­sor­ship pro­gram, despite the Department’s best efforts to assist as many as pos­si­ble. To lose more pro­grams in the next fis­cal year would have an extremely debil­i­tat­ing effect on the sec­tor which has been clear about the neces­sity for ade­quate, pre­dictable and ongo­ing sup­port. The Depart­ment is attempt­ing to secure the same sort of fund­ing for itself so that its sus­tain­ablity pro­grams for the sec­tor can con­tinue: the irony of the sit­u­a­tion is only too clear.

You can access the Bud­get analy­sis at http://www.ccarts.ca/eng/01new/dearprudence.pdf