ESTIMATES TABLED

Ottawa, Novem­ber 4 th , 2004 — CCA mem­bers will remem­ber that, in 2003, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment com­mit­ted to real­lo­cate $1 bil­lion annu­ally in exist­ing pro­gram fund­ing “from lower to higher pri­or­i­ties”, with said “pri­or­i­ties” to be deter­mined by the gov­ern­ment.   In addi­tion, one of Prime Min­is­ter Paul Martin’s first ini­tia­tives upon tak­ing office was to estab­lish a Cab­i­net Com­mit­tee on Expen­di­ture Review to “con­duct a fun­da­men­tal review of all pro­grams and expen­di­tures to ensure that spend­ing remains under con­trol and is closely aligned with the evolv­ing pri­or­i­ties of gov­ern­ment”.   The amount to be “saved” was set at $12 bil­lion over three years.   (See CCA’s bud­get analy­sis, Dear Pru­dence at http://www.ccarts.ca/en/documents/dearprudence.pdf )   We are now begin­ning to get an idea of where some of the cuts will be made.

The Main Esti­mates for the 2004-05 fis­cal year were tabled but not adopted ear­lier this year, due to the May elec­tion call.   They were re-tabled today, together with the Sup­ple­men­tary (A) Esti­mates.   The Sup­ple­men­tary (A) Esti­mates indi­cate that the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage will receive the fol­low­ing cuts — most of them fairly small, in the over­all scheme of things:

•  Cana­dian Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion ($8 million)

•  Canada Coun­cil for the Arts ($120,000)

•  Cana­dian Museum of Nature ($100,000)

•  Tele­film ($1.4 million)

•  National Gallery of Canada ($400,000)

The line item for the National Library of Canada and the National Archives indi­cates a cut of $40-$50 mil­lion.   This seems like a con­sid­er­able amount of money but may be indica­tive of the sav­ings result­ing from the recent amal­ga­ma­tion of the two institutions.

The Esti­mates will now go before the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Cana­dian Her­itage for debate. For com­plete details of the Esti­mates, go to the Trea­sury Board web­site at http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/media/nr-cp/2004/1104_e.asp

Big­ger cuts to come?

The big­ger cuts will likely appear in the Sup­ple­men­tary (B) Esti­mates, which will reflect the Expen­di­ture Review process; there is no know­ing when these will appear or even if they will be made pub­lic, as it is entirely at the dis­cre­tion of Trea­sury Board.   All gov­ern­ment depart­ments and agen­cies have been asked to iden­tify 5% of non-statutory spend­ing for real­lo­ca­tion.   This poses a par­tic­u­lar prob­lem for the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage and the cul­tural agen­cies in that vir­tu­ally all fund­ing for arts and cul­ture is non-statutory (ie: requires annual Par­lia­men­tary approval as opposed to being enshrined in exist­ing legislation).

If one takes the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts, for exam­ple, a 5% cut of its base bud­get would be approx­i­mately $6 mil­lion.   With­out con­fir­ma­tion of the renewal of the Tomor­row Starts Today fund­ing, the Coun­cil would also stand to lose an addi­tional $25 mil­lion next year.   How would the Coun­cil be able to oper­ate effec­tively with such a reduced budget?

The Expen­di­ture Review would appear to be bureau­cracy dri­ven rather than dri­ven by Par­lia­ment.   It is the gov­ern­ment which makes the bud­get allo­ca­tions at the begin­ning of each fis­cal year; so why demand that pub­lic ser­vants then spend innu­mer­able hours each year work­ing out where to cut in order to return a set amount?

The Min­is­ter of Cana­dian Her­itage, Liza Frulla, has made encour­ag­ing remarks regard­ing the poten­tial cuts and the renewal of the TST fund­ing, but she is not the one who makes the final decisions.

The fed­eral gov­ern­ment is boast­ing a sur­plus of $9.1 bil­lion for the cur­rent fis­cal year.   It is to be hoped that saner heads will pre­vail and that agen­cies such as the Canada Coun­cil will be spared.

Advo­cacy, advo­cacy, advocacy

The Canada Coun­cil has just released its 47 th annual report which calls for Cana­di­ans to send a clear mes­sage to gov­ern­ment (at all lev­els) about the pos­i­tive impact of the arts on their com­mu­ni­ties.   The full text of the report, together with detailed infor­ma­tion by province or ter­ri­tory and a search­able data­base of grants awarded in the last fis­cal year (2003–04), can be found at www.canadacouncil.ca/publications_e/annualreports .