Federal budget: Economic and Fiscal Update and the Second Set of Supplementary Estimates

CCA Bul­letin 32/11

Novem­ber 17, 2011

Just the facts

Last week, the gov­ern­ment released its Update of Eco­nomic and Fis­cal Pro­jec­tions. One main mes­sage emerged from the doc­u­ment:  owing to con­tin­ued weak­ness in the global econ­omy, down­ward revi­sions for eco­nomic growth in Canada and con­sid­er­able eco­nomic uncer­tainty going for­ward, the gov­ern­ment will not return to fis­cal bal­ance until 2015–2016, a year later than pro­jected in Bud­get 2011.

This does not alter the seri­ous­ness and resolve of the gov­ern­ment to adhere to the Strate­gic and Oper­at­ing Review process, through which it aims to iden­tify $4 bil­lion in annual ongo­ing reduc­tions in expen­di­tures by 2014–2015. At the heart of this process, all fed­eral orga­ni­za­tions must iden­tify five and ten-percent fund­ing reduc­tion sce­nar­ios (see the CCA’s 2011-12 Fed­eral Bud­get Analy­sis for full details of the review process).

The gov­ern­ment also announced that it is reduc­ing the max­i­mum poten­tial increase in Employ­ment Insur­ance pre­mium rates in 2012 to five cents (down from 10 cents) and is extend­ing the Work-Share Pro­gram enhance­ment, which pro­vides an exten­sion of up to 16 weeks for work-sharing agreements.

Tell me more

In addi­tion, the gov­ern­ment recently released the sec­ond set of Sup­ple­men­tary Esti­mates for the 2011-12 fis­cal year (the CCA reported on the first set, Sup­ple­men­tary Esti­mates A, in the 2011 fed­eral bud­get analy­sis).

From the point of view of the cul­tural sec­tor, many of the announce­ments in Sup­ple­men­tary Esti­mates B for­mally enact spend­ing announce­ments for 2011-12 already made in Bud­get 2011, notably:

• the $60 mil­lion top-up to the CBC;
• an addi­tional $15 mil­lion to the Canada Peri­od­i­cal Fund; and,
• the renewal of the Canada Media Fund at a level of $100 mil­lion per year.

A num­ber of new fund­ing announce­ments for the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage were included in this set of Sup­ple­men­tary Esti­mates, although very few per­tain directly to the arts and cul­ture sector:

• an addi­tional $4.8 mil­lion to the Cel­e­bra­tion and Com­mem­o­ra­tion Pro­gram to sup­port the bicen­ten­nial com­mem­o­ra­tion of the War of 1812 (the Cana­dian Museum of Civ­i­liza­tion also received $665,000 for this purpose);
• an addi­tional $29.7 mil­lion to the Abo­rig­i­nal Peo­ples Pro­gram to fund “civic par­tic­i­pa­tion of Abo­rig­i­nal youths liv­ing in urban set­tings” and for “Abo­rig­i­nal Com­mu­ni­ties in the preser­va­tion of their languages”;
• an addi­tional $13.5 mil­lion to the Games’ Host­ing Pro­gram, for cap­i­tal expen­di­tures related to the Toronto 2015 Pan Amer­i­can and Para­pan Amer­i­can Games;
• $2.7 mil­lion related to “gov­ern­ment adver­tis­ing pro­grams”; and,
• $231,000 to sup­port ”the cor­po­rate alliance and com­mer­cial oper­a­tor rev­enues aris­ing from Expo 2010 and its con­tract with Cirque du Soleil which the depart­ment remit­ted to the Con­sol­i­dated Rev­enue Fund”.

The Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage also received two trans­fers of funds from other fed­eral organizations

• $207,000 from Indian Affairs and North­ern Devel­op­ment to pro­mote activ­i­ties related to National Abo­rig­i­nal Day; and,
• $20,000 from the Canada Coun­cil for “sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis and research sum­maries on the arts”.

In addi­tion, the Depart­ment trans­ferred funds to var­i­ous fed­eral agen­cies for a vari­ety of purposes:

• $50,000 to the Canada Coun­cil to sup­port research on the state of and future of arts pre­sen­ta­tion in the country;
• $127,000 to the Canada Coun­cil to sup­port “mul­ti­lat­eral coop­er­a­tion projects in French lan­guage, as well as to ensure Canada’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in meet­ings of the Com­mis­sion inter­na­tionale du théâtre francophone”;
• $150,000 to the NAC for Zones théâ­trales which fos­ter “expo­sure to Cana­dian fran­coph­one com­mu­ni­ties’ and Que­bec regions’ pro­fes­sional theatre”;
• $446,000 to Library and Archives Canada “to fund film acqui­si­tion and preser­va­tion activ­i­ties” as part of the Cana­dian Fea­ture Film Policy;
• $437,000 to the Social Sci­ences and Human­i­ties Research Coun­cil of Canada for research on sport par­tic­i­pa­tion; and,
• $175,000 to Vet­er­ans Affairs for the Historica-Dominion Institute’s Mem­ory Project, which helps to “edu­cate Cana­dian youth about the impor­tance of remembrance”.