Deconstructing the Federal Budget 2007 from a cultural point of view

CCA Bul­letin 12/07

March 22, 2007

A sec­ond look at Monday’s budget

For the past two days, since Bud­get Day in the House of Com­mons, the CCA has been look­ing at the Government’s Main Esti­mates for 2007-08. The Main Esti­mates are the pro­jected spend­ing of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment in all gov­ern­ment depart­ments and agen­cies for any given fis­cal year. This is where the Bud­get starts to make con­crete sense and where close scrutiny reveals whether the money announced is new or not or whether appar­ent cuts have been trans­formed into real­lo­ca­tions to new minted pro­grams, suited to new needs or to the government’s polit­i­cal agenda.

For the sec­ond year in a row, the Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment has released its Main Esti­mates a few weeks before it tabled its bud­get.  In pre­vi­ous years, the Main Esti­mates were released after the fed­eral bud­get and pro­vided a com­plete out­line of government’s expenses, includ­ing items from the freshly-minted fed­eral budget.

The Main Esti­mates for 2007–2008 were tabled on Feb­ru­ary 27 2007, well in advance of the March 19, 2007 fed­eral bud­get announce­ment by the Hon. Jim Fla­herty.  As was the case last year, we can expect to see fur­ther details on spend­ing reflected in the Sup­ple­men­tary Esti­mates which will not be made pub­lic until the fall, as part of the over­all eco­nomic update. This means that the full government’s bud­getary inten­tions will remain unclear until next Sep­tem­ber or Octo­ber, a rea­son for hope or con­cern, depend­ing on where you sit.

A required mech­a­nism of gov­ern­ment, Sup­ple­men­tary Esti­mates have the added advan­tage of delay­ing deci­sions you don’t want to take or announce on Bud­get Day. For instance, the gov­ern­ment could decide to make up for ignor­ing in Monday’s bud­get the needs of Cana­dian muse­ums and finally announce it will imple­ment a pol­icy it sup­ported when it was in oppo­si­tion. Alter­na­tively, Canada’s New Gov­ern­ment may decide not to do as in the past few years, namely not to make up the some $60 mil­lion cut to the bud­get of the CBC through the Sup­ple­men­tary Esti­mates process. Thank­fully, at the moment of going to press, we learn that Min­is­ter Oda has announced the renewal of this pal­try 60 mil­lion dol­lars, for the next two years. At least, this will save sev­eral months of uncer­tainty not only for the CBC, but for all artists, cre­ators, pro­duc­ers who depend on this financ­ing to do their work.

What then do this year’s cur­rent Main Esti­mates tell us at first look?

First, they con­firm the first impres­sion that if the gov­ern­ment has a strat­egy for the cul­tural sec­tor in Canada, it has not started to imple­ment it. While there are laud­able items in the bud­get con­cern­ing cul­ture in the broad­est sense of the word, and while there is a con­cern for grass­root financ­ing and for involv­ing the pri­vate sec­tor, there is no obvi­ous plan or pol­icy the announced expen­di­tures can be linked to, nor any long term com­mit­ment to any­thing, all allo­ca­tions hav­ing a max­i­mum lifes­pan of two years.

The main exam­ple of this is with the much her­alded 2006 increases to the bud­get of the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts which, for the time being, appear to be no more than truly one-time increases.  Not only that, but the Coun­cil could see a fur­ther reduc­tion to its bud­get after 2010 if the suite of pro­grams in the Tomor­row Starts Today (TST) enve­lope is not renewed.  There is still lit­tle clue to the fate of these pro­grams over the long term in either the bud­get or the Main Estimates.

The two-year com­mit­ment to the Cana­dian Tele­vi­sion Fund made by Min­is­ter Oda dur­ing the recent cri­sis is lim­ited to pre­cisely that and at a level which has not been reviewed since its incep­tion in 1996.

The Depart­ment of For­eign Affairs and Inter­na­tional Trade has not seen fit to sup­ple­ment the pub­lic diplo­macy funds for cul­tural rela­tions.  The pro­gram lost funds in the last round of the bil­lion dol­lar real­lo­ca­tion exer­cise in fall 2006, turn­ing Canada’s posts abroad into fundrais­ers to sup­port cul­tural pro­gram­ming and rela­tions around the world, includ­ing our mis­sions in Lon­don, Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, and Wash­ing­ton to name but a few.  These cuts have an impact on the abil­ity of Cana­dian artists and arts orga­ni­za­tions to develop for­eign audi­ences and mar­kets, which is an impor­tant dimen­sion of attain­ing a broad­ened finan­cial base for their long-term health and sustainability.

The new $30 mil­lion pro­gram for local arts fes­ti­vals and spe­cial events was a sur­prise to many, though it is not imme­di­ately clear which depart­ment will be respon­si­ble for the admin­is­tra­tion of the pro­gram nor what the nature and details of the cri­te­ria of eli­gi­bil­ity for these funds are.

And finally on the tax­a­tion side, noth­ing in the 2007 bud­get to ensure equity for self-employed Cana­di­ans, a grow­ing seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion where one tra­di­tion­ally finds large num­bers of artists and creators.

What next?

There are a few remain­ing ques­tions hov­er­ing in the wake of the bud­get that may still have an impact on fed­eral spend­ing pro­grams and agen­cies that sup­port Cana­dian arts and cul­ture.  First and fore­most – is the bil­lion dol­lar real­lo­ca­tion exer­cise, announced in the 2006-07 fed­eral bud­get as a two-year process, still in place? Has the tar­get amount shifted? Not clear at the moment.

We will be fol­low­ing these and other 2007 bud­get issues very closely on your behalf.  As answers emerge, we will con­tinue to share infor­ma­tion with our mem­bers and sup­port­ers via our bul­letins.  As a new ini­tia­tive to pro­vide and share infor­ma­tion, within the next few days we will orga­nize two con­fer­ence calls to give an overview of the sit­u­a­tion and answer ques­tions as best we can. Keep an eye on your email for the details.

Also, as pre­vi­ously indi­cated, the CCA will strive to answer all out­stand­ing issues and ques­tions as it works to pre­pare its more detailed analy­sis of this year’s fed­eral bud­get, a doc­u­ment which should be avail­able by late April / early May.

Tell Me More…

In the Cana­dian Her­itage Port­fo­lio, here are some standouts:

• The bud­get of the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage (DCH) declines from $1,384,631,000.00 to $1,363,015,00.00, which is a decline of close to $22 million;
• Cre­ation of Cana­dian Con­tent and Per­for­mance Excel­lence – an increase from $297,000,000.00 to $ 341,080,000.00;
• Sus­tain­abil­ity of Cul­tural Expres­sion and Par­tic­i­pa­tion – a decrease from $281,000,000.00  to $ 210,633,000.00;
• Com­mu­nity Devel­op­ment and Capac­ity Build­ing – a decrease from $42,143,700.00 to $ 35,644,933.00;
• Grants in Sup­port of the Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Pro­gram – a decrease from $42,134,700.00 to $35,644,933.00;
• Cana­dian Tele­vi­sion Fund – an increase from $ 99,550,000.00 to $119,950,000.00
• Book Indus­try Devel­op­ment Pro­gram – an increase from $19,460,242.00 to  $27,460,242.00;
• National Arts Train­ing Pro­gram – a decrease from $15,903,920.00 to $10,709,000.00;
• Court Chal­lenges Pro­gram – a decrease from $2,802,076.00 to $100,000.00;
• Exchanges Canada Pro­gram – a decrease from $17,894,389.00 to $11,712,389.00;
• Cel­e­brate Canada! Activ­i­ties (Canada Day Cel­e­bra­tions) – a major increase from $1,352,600.00 to $15,988,600.00.

The Main Esti­mates have also re-ordered some pro­grams.  At first glance it would seem that major cuts have been made, only to find the dif­fer­ence under another pro­gram head­ing with the same tar­get community.

The Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage Port­fo­lio Agen­cies are also included in this sec­tion of the Main Esti­mates, some high­lights are:

• the addi­tional $30 mil­lion to the bud­get of the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts is included, hon­our­ing the com­mit­ment of the 2006-07 fed­eral bud­get to increase on a non-recurrent basis the bud­get of the Coun­cil over two fis­cal years, end­ing March 31 2008;
• the bud­get of the Cana­dian Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion has declined from $1,112,039,000.00 last year to $1,043,953,000.00 for 2007-08;
• the Museum of Nature’s allo­ca­tion rises from $59,145,000.00 to $84,221,000.00, the increase is to cover cap­i­tal costs asso­ci­ated with the ongo­ing ren­o­va­tion of the museum;
• the National Arts Cen­tre (NAC) sees an increase from $33,283,00.00 to $35,216,000.00;
• the National Film Board (NFB) appro­pri­a­tion is to rise from $64,839,00.00, to $67,118,000.00;
• Tele­film Canada sees a decrease from $125,042,00.00 to $104,649,000.00, which is likely a tech­ni­cal adjust­ment related to the Cana­dian Tele­vi­sion Fund increase (see above)

At the Depart­ment of For­eign Affairs and Inter­na­tional Trade (DFAIT), the CCA sees a fur­ther decrease in the grants ded­i­cated to cul­tural rela­tions to $4,694,000.00 from $7,894,000.00 due to the con­tri­bu­tion made through the bil­lion dol­lar real­lo­ca­tion exer­cise announced on Sep­tem­ber 25 2006. How­ever, aca­d­e­mic rela­tions saw a decrease in their grant­ing pro­gram from $13,550,000.00 to $10,510,000.00, though this was accom­pa­nied by another infu­sion of $2,170,000.00 in the con­tri­bu­tions listings.