Federal Budget 2013: The CCA Makes its Recommendations to the Finance Committee

CCA Bul­letin 12/12

July 26, 2012

The Facts

On June 8th, the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance ini­ti­ated its pre-budget con­sul­ta­tions by invit­ing all Cana­di­ans to sub­mit their pri­or­i­ties for the 2013 fed­eral bud­get. The CCA sub­mit­ted its rec­om­men­da­tions today and hopes to have the oppor­tu­nity to appear before the Committee.

This year, the Com­mit­tee is lim­it­ing sub­mis­sions by only accept­ing responses to an online ques­tion­naire that includes five rel­a­tively sharp and pointed ques­tions cov­er­ing top­ics not nec­es­sar­ily suited to the arts, cul­ture and her­itage sec­tor. In addi­tion, inter­ven­ers are lim­ited to 350 words per answer. The con­sul­ta­tion ends on August 3rd.

Tell me more

The min­i­mal­ist approach of the Com­mit­tee has forced us to change our style for this sub­mis­sion and develop key argu­ments in a few words. Our rec­om­men­da­tions are made under the theme of:

Cul­ture and cre­ativ­ity as eco­nomic engines

The fol­low­ing sum­ma­rizes our rec­om­men­da­tions to the five themes addressed in the ques­tion­naire:

 

1.    Eco­nomic Recov­ery and Growth

Qual­ity of life as lever­age for eco­nomic growth

• Increas­ing invest­ments in arts and cul­ture via the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts, the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage, the CBC, the National Film Board, Tele­film, the Canada Media Fund, and across the spec­trum of cul­tural indus­tries pro­grams sup­port­ing growth in this strate­gic sec­tor. These invest­ments need to be rec­og­nized as key inputs to a thriv­ing dig­i­tal econ­omy.
  

 

2.    Job Cre­ation

 Cre­at­ing a job in cul­ture is not expen­sive and offers real returns

• Invest­ing in Cana­dian content.
• Invest­ing in domes­tic and inter­na­tional tour­ing cre­ates jobs.

 

3.    Demo­graphic Changes

The inte­gra­tion of com­mu­ni­ties and gen­er­a­tions through arts and culture

• Sup­port­ing train­ing in cul­ture boosts Cana­dian creativity.

 

4.  Pro­duc­tiv­ity

• Rein­vest­ing in the col­lec­tion and analy­sis of cul­ture statistics.
• Devel­op­ing coor­di­nated poli­cies to sup­port the pro­duc­tion of Cana­dian con­tent on all platforms.
• Rein­vest­ing in the preser­va­tion, access and dig­i­ti­za­tion of our her­itage, an area hard hit by the 2012 budget.

 

5.    Other Chal­lenges

A solu­tion to sev­eral chal­lenges: pur­sue fis­cal equity

• Intro­duc­ing fis­cal mea­sures that mit­i­gate the effects of fluc­tu­a­tions in income such as income aver­ag­ing for inde­pen­dent artists and allow­ing the tax­able income for the cur­rent year to be used as ref­er­ence to estab­lish the level of con­tri­bu­tion to a RRSP.
• Allow­ing artists and cre­ators to deduct up to $15,000 of their income derived from copy­right roy­al­ties and neigh­bor­ing rights below $60,000 as is done in Que­bec. Such a mea­sure would be rel­a­tively cheap for the gov­ern­ment and pro­vide greater tax fair­ness to the indi­vid­ual artists.

 

To learn more, read our sub­mis­sion on our Website

What can I do?

If you wish par­tic­i­pate in the con­sul­ta­tion, you must reg­is­ter to answer the ques­tion­naire. If you sim­ply sup­port the CCA sub­mis­sion, you sim­ply say so under each of the questions.