FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE TO ARTISTS AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS INCREASED FOR SIXTH CONSECUTIVE YEAR

Ottawa , Jan­u­ary 7, 2004 — StatsCan released data today (7 Jan­u­ary) on gov­ern­ment expen­di­tures on cul­ture   (2001–02, all three lev­els).   Super­fi­cially, the news is good: total gov­ern­ment spend­ing increased at its fastest rate in a decade, sur­pass­ing $3 bil­lion for the first time ever.   This rep­re­sents a 7.6% increase from the pre­vi­ous year, and the fourth con­sec­u­tive year that spend­ing on cul­ture as a whole has risen.

What the num­bers show

Fed­eral gov­ern­ment

Over­all, fed­eral gov­ern­ment spend­ing on cul­ture (rep­re­sent­ing 1.8% of the government’s total bud­get) reached record highs: fund­ing was $3.2 bil­lion, up 8.9% from the pre­vi­ous year.   The StatsCan report indi­cates that the increases were across the board:

• $2.3 bil­lion went to oper­at­ing expen­di­tures for gov­ern­ment depart­ments and cul­tural agen­cies.   This is an increase of 5.4%, and rep­re­sents 72% of the total fed­eral cul­tural budget.
• Broad­cast­ing con­sumed the lion’s share: $1.4 bil­lion or roughly 60% of the total fed­eral oper­a­tional budget.
• Her­itage activ­i­ties (muse­ums, archives, national parks and his­toric sites) took up a fur­ther 27% ($624 million).
• $669.5 mil­lion went for finan­cial assis­tance to artists and orga­ni­za­tions, up 16.1% over the pre­vi­ous year (and the sixth con­sec­u­tive annual increase).

•  Sound record­ing received $17.2 mil­lion, up 74.6%.

•  Finan­cial aid to the per­form­ing arts increased by a third to $102.9 million.

•  Book and peri­od­i­cal pub­lish­ers received $145.9 mil­lion (up 10.4%).

•  Film and video indus­try increased 9.1% to $234.8 million.

 

•  $239.3 mil­lion was spent on cap­i­tal expen­di­tures (up 27.8% — the high­est increase in a decade).   Most of this related to increased fund­ing for broad­cast­ing projects in Que­bec ; there were also increased cap­i­tal expen­di­tures on national parks in New­found­land and Labrador , and in Man­i­toba .

	$ (mil­lions)	% increase (decrease)
Total fed­eral spend­ing on culture	3200	8.9
Gov­ern­ment depart­ments and fed­eral cul­tural agen­cies   •  broad­cast­ing •  her­itage	2300   1400 624	5.4
Artists and cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions   •  sound record­ing •  per­form­ing arts •  book and peri­od­i­cal publishing •  film and video	669.5   17.2 102.9 145.9 234.8	16.1   74.6 33.3 10.4 9.1
Cap­i­tal expenditures	239.3	27.8

Per capita expen­di­tures: not unex­pect­edly, all three ter­ri­to­ries received high amounts.   Of the provinces, Prince Edward Island received the largest amount ($160) closely fol­lowed by Que­bec ($149); British Colum­bia and Saskatchewan received the small­est amounts at $39 and $45 respectively.

Provincial/territorial gov­ern­ment

Provin­cial and ter­ri­to­r­ial gov­ern­ment spend­ing on cul­ture stood at $2.1 bil­lion, up 2.6% over the pre­vi­ous year, but indi­cat­ing a slower growth rate than ear­lier years — 10.7% in 1998–99 and 5.5% last year.   (In some cases, fund­ing car­ried out within indi­vid­ual provinces skewed the results, as indi­cated below.)   Of this amount:

•  $796 mil­lion (37% of the provincial/territorial cul­tural bud­gets) went on oper­a­tions and cap­i­tal projects (an increase of 1.7% from the pre­vi­ous year).

•  Her­itage and broad­cast­ing con­tin­ued to be the prin­ci­pal ben­e­fi­cia­ries at $594.4 mil­lion (75%).

 

•  Ontario and Que­bec accounted for two-thirds of this total.

•  Her­itage on its own received $98.1 mil­lion, a drop of 1% (due to reduced finan­cial aid to muse­ums and other her­itage facil­i­ties for con­struc­tion and ren­o­va­tion by the gov­ern­ment of Alberta ).

 

•  $1.4 bil­lion in grants and con­tri­bu­tions to artists and cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions (up 3%).

 

•  Libraries, per­form­ing arts, and her­itage received the bulk of this money, which amounts to over twice the fed­eral contribution.

 

•  Libraries received over half the allo­ca­tion, an increase of 4.2%, due mainly to increased fund­ing to uni­ver­sity and col­lege libraries by the gov­ern­ment of Que­bec .

•  One notable decrease was in fund­ing for artists and per­form­ing arts groups, which declined by over 10%, mainly due to a reduc­tion in cap­i­tal grants for per­form­ing arts facil­i­ties by the gov­ern­ments of Que­bec and Alberta .

	$ (mil­lions)	% increase (decrease)
Total provincial/territorial spend­ing on culture	2100	2.6
Oper­a­tions and cap­i­tal projects   •  broad­cast­ing •  her­itage	796   496.3 98.1	1.7   (1)
Artists and cul­tural organizations	1400	3

Per cap­i­tal expen­di­tures: again, Yukon and the North­west Ter­ri­to­ries were high; fig­ures for Nunavut were not avail­able.   Amongst the provinces, Que­bec recorded the high­est per capita expen­di­tures ($102) and Ontario the low­est ($46).   [Both these provinces recently under went a change of gov­ern­ment.   In the case of Ontario , based on the Lib­eral party’s cul­tural plat­form, the sec­tor antic­i­pates some improve­ment over the next few years; for Que­bec , the pic­ture is bleaker as indi­ca­tions are that the new Lib­eral gov­ern­ment will cut back on cul­tural spend­ing from the lev­els pro­vided by the pre­vi­ous Parti québé­cois government.]

Munic­i­pal gov­ern­ment

Munic­i­pal­i­ties con­tributed $1.8 bil­lion, up 9.3%; the bulk of this fund­ing ($1.3 bil­lion) went to libraries, an increase of 6.6% over 2000.   Munic­i­pal cul­tural fund­ing has increased steadily over the past five years, a result of down­load­ing from the provin­cial and fed­eral governments.

Per capita expen­di­tures: British Colum­bia shows the high­est per capita rate among the provinces and ter­ri­to­ries (at $69), with last place provin­cially going to PEI .   (The ter­ri­to­ries of the Yukon and Nunavut were $17 and $1 respectively.)

A note of caution

One needs to look beyond the fig­ures to get the whole picture.

The year in ques­tion, 2001-02, is the year in which the fed­eral gov­ern­ment announced the major injec­tion of funds into the cul­tural sec­tor, under the rubric Tomor­row Starts Today.   This fund­ing, a total of just over $500 mil­lion, was for a three year period.   The Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage recently received a one year exten­sion to this fund­ing (for the 2004–2005 fis­cal year) in order to carry out eval­u­a­tions of the pro­grammes it sup­ports.   While the cul­tural sec­tor warmly wel­comed the influx of funds, CCA’s analy­sis of the invest­ment (avail­able on our web­site at http://www.ccarts.ca/eng/04res/Investment.html ), released in July 2002, came to four conclusions:

•  renewed fund­ing to the cul­tural sec­tor was long overdue

•  pro­gramme imple­men­ta­tion has been slow across the board

•  the Depart­ment itself was a major ben­e­fi­ciary in terms of personnel

•  the pro­grammes should not be viewed as con­sti­tut­ing a fed­eral cul­tural policy

One other point: just before Christ­mas the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, under the new Prime Min­is­ter Paul Mar­tin, moved Parks Canada out of the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage.   How­ever, parks remain part of the cul­tural port­fo­lio regard­less of where it is parked (excuse the pun), and expen­di­tures relat­ing to parks will con­tinue to be shown as part of the cul­tural data.

For more infor­ma­tion on this cul­tural data release, go to www.statcan.ca, and type in 87F0001XIE in the “search the site” box.