FROM THE DESK of Alain Pineau: Pre-budget Consultation: Finance Minister Flaherty expresses interest in at least two of the CCA’s priorities!

CCA Bul­letin 21/06

April 20, 2006

The CCA par­tic­i­pated Wednes­day in a meet­ing with Fed­eral Finance Min­is­ter James Fla­herty, Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary Diane Ablon­czy and Finance Depart­ment Offi­cers, in the con­text of the pre-budget con­sul­ta­tions launched by the Min­is­ter on April 6.

The meet­ing regrouped rep­re­sen­ta­tives from 18 national orga­ni­za­tions,  from the edu­ca­tion, child and health care sec­tors and the pub­lic ser­vice, the CCA being the only one in the mix con­cerned with arts and cul­ture. The two hour meet­ing was rig­or­ously struc­tured, each orga­ni­za­tion hav­ing three min­utes to present their respec­tive bud­get pri­or­i­ties and a final minute at the end of the meet­ing to wrap up or answer a point raised by the Minister!

Min­is­ter Fla­herty opened the meet­ing by say­ing that he was aware of the dif­fi­cul­ties posed by such time con­straints, not only within the meet­ing itself, but also with prepar­ing his first bud­get. He indi­cated that this con­sul­ta­tion was just the begin­ning of a broader con­sul­ta­tion con­cern­ing the fol­low­ing bud­get, where more issues beyond the well-known top five pri­or­i­ties of his gov­ern­ment could be addressed. Amongst some gen­eral con­cerns, he expressed the government’s desire to exer­cise fru­gal­ity in fed­eral spend­ing, whose growth of 15% over the past year is deemed irre­spon­si­ble and unsustainable.

Kindly but firmly kept in line by Diane Ablonczy’s use of her new stop watch, each of the 18 spokesper­sons obvi­ously kept to the essen­tial requests of their respec­tive sec­tors. How­ever, a good num­ber of major issues were addressed one way or another by one or many of the pre­sen­ters, whether it be the largely sup­ported need for a prop­erly financed and reg­u­lated national child care pro­gram, the inap­pro­pri­ate­ness of a GST rebate when so much gov­ern­ment invest­ment is required in so many areas, the risks of “over-accountability” for the not-for-profit sec­tors, etc.

On behalf of the CCA, I re-tabled the sub­mis­sion we made last Octo­ber in the round of pre-budget con­sul­ta­tions con­ducted by the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment. Not sur­pris­ingly, our pri­or­i­ties have not changed much over the past six months: as recon­firmed at our March Con­fer­ence, they are related to increased and sta­ble fund­ing and to tax­a­tion issues.

Under fund­ing:

• The CCA fully sup­ports the Cana­dian Arts Coalition’s request for at least a dou­bling of the Canada Council’s bud­get over three years;
• The CCA requests that the new fed­eral museum pol­icy, long in the mak­ing, be put in place and ade­quate fund­ing for muse­ums and art gal­leries across the coun­try be provided;
• The CCA con­sid­ers the CBC part of the back­bone of the Cana­dian cul­tural sec­tor. We sup­port its plan for regional pro­gram­ming in radio and tele­vi­sion broadcasting.

Under tax­a­tion:

• The CCA fully endorses the government’s promise to give a $500 tax credit to par­ents of chil­dren under 16 years old who enroll them in phys­i­cal activ­ity pro­grams. We urge that this credit be extended to all arts activ­ity pro­grams for chil­dren under 16 because of the well-documented ben­e­fits of indi­vid­ual and social well­ness accru­ing from expo­sure to the arts;
• The CCA urges the Min­is­ter to imple­ment income aver­ag­ing for self-employed Cana­di­ans, includ­ing artists and cul­tural work­ers. The grow­ing num­ber of self-employed peo­ple in the Cana­dian labour mar­ket who face fluc­tu­at­ing income lev­els would greatly ben­e­fit from such a mea­sure of social equity.
• Finally, the CCA urges the gov­ern­ment to put in place poli­cies to exempt all (or a max­i­mum level) of cre­ators’ copy­right and patent roy­al­ties from tax­a­tion, as recently pro­posed by the Cana­dian Coun­cil of Chief Exec­u­tives, mea­sures which would greatly con­tribute to Cana­dian cre­ativ­ity and inter­na­tional competitiveness.

While our most imme­di­ate pri­or­ity (the Canada Council’s bud­get increase) sim­ply drew the com­ment that they had heard abun­dantly about this one from Her­itage Min­is­ter Oda, I am pleased to report that in his sum­ming up, the Min­is­ter pub­licly com­mit­ted to meet­ing with the CCA again in the near future to fur­ther explore the $500 tax credit for children’s arts train­ing (to par­al­lel phys­i­cal activ­i­ties) and the exemp­tion of copy­right rev­enue from taxation.

We will of course keep press­ing the gov­ern­ment on those two issues, but will also con­tinue advo­cat­ing for our other top pri­or­i­ties, the Canada Council’s bud­get increase remain­ing on top of the list. Stay tuned for more infor­ma­tion on the upcom­ing bud­get… and on the prepa­ra­tion for the next one!