House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance Releases Report on Pre-Budget 2007 Recommendations

CCA Bul­letin 51/06

Decem­ber 11, 2006

Just the Facts

On Decem­ber 7, the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance released its report to the Min­is­ter of Finance, the Hon. James Fla­herty, regard­ing its 2007 fed­eral pre-budget con­sul­ta­tions. Over­all, the Com­mit­tee has made forty-two rec­om­men­da­tions about mea­sures it would like to see reflected in the next fed­eral bud­get. The Com­mit­tee is dom­i­nated by Oppo­si­tion mem­bers and the report con­tains minor­ity reports from the Con­ser­v­a­tive Party, the Lib­eral Party, the Bloc Que­be­cois and the New Demo­c­ra­tic Party.

Three rec­om­men­da­tions are of direct inter­est to the arts and cul­ture sec­tor, they are:

Rec­om­men­da­tion 21: “The fed­eral gov­ern­ment should study the fea­si­bil­ity of a tax mea­sure that would rec­og­nize and reward the hours of vol­un­teer activ­ity. This study should be com­pleted no later than Sep­tem­ber 2007″

Rec­om­men­da­tion 22: “The fed­eral gov­ern­ment should increase funds allo­cated to the arts and cul­tural sec­tor. In par­tic­u­lar, fund­ing increases should be con­sid­ered for the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts, the Cana­dian Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, the Cana­dian Tele­vi­sion Fund, and Tele­film Canada. Fund­ing for the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts should reach $ 300 mil­lion over two years”

“The gov­ern­ment should also increase the funds allo­cated to fed­eral regional devel­op­ment agen­cies and to projects for Canada ‘s north­ern ter­ri­to­ries in order that they have the resources to finance, to a greater degree, the infra­struc­ture and growth needs of such enti­ties as zoos, aquar­i­ums, fairs, exhi­bi­tions and fes­ti­vals. The amount of the increased fund­ing and the man­ner in which it will be allo­cated should be announced no later than 30 April 2007.”

“Finally, the gov­ern­ment should iden­tity ways in which the cur­rent fed­eral tax and spend­ing ini­tia­tives sup­port­ing the arts and cul­ture sec­tor could be sim­pli­fied and bet­ter coor­di­nated, as well as develop a plan for the long-term finan­cial sus­tain­abil­ity of the sector.”

Rec­om­men­da­tion 23: “The fed­eral gov­ern­ment should review the range of fed­eral mea­sures and pro­grams that sup­port the preser­va­tion and restora­tion of her­itage buildings.”

“The review, which should be com­pleted no later than 30 April 2007, should focus on the eli­gi­bil­ity of not-for-profit orga­ni­za­tions, pub­lic agen­cies and pri­vate indi­vid­u­als for the mea­sures and programs.”

While the Gov­ern­ment is not bound to include any of these mea­sures in its next bud­get, the report of the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee demon­strates the wide range of arts and cul­ture orga­ni­za­tions that par­tic­i­pated in the hear­ings. In the “What We Heard” chap­ters of the report, one can see that the Com­mit­tee not only heard rep­re­sen­ta­tions from the arts and cul­ture sec­tor but included them in the Report.

The Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA) is par­tic­u­larly sat­is­fied that many of our pol­icy pri­or­i­ties, rec­om­mended by our mem­ber­ship dur­ing our March 2006 con­fer­ences and then rat­i­fied as an “action plan” by our Board, were taken up in the Decem­ber 7 report. The CCA con­grat­u­lates the mem­bers of the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee for their ded­i­cated efforts and we are pleased that they worked together to pro­duce a very strong report.

Tell Me More

In a review of the dis­sent­ing reports from each polit­i­cal party, each one addressed some dimen­sion of the rep­re­sen­ta­tions made by the arts and cul­ture orga­ni­za­tions that appeared before the Stand­ing Committee.

In the Con­ser­v­a­tive report we find the fol­low­ing: “Specif­i­cally, we want Bud­get 2007 to focus on value for money invested in tourism, lit­er­acy, abo­rig­i­nals, the envi­ron­ment and the child care spaces ini­tia­tive; on imple­ment­ing a national museum strat­egy rather than short-term incon­sis­tent fund­ing, and to ensure that the CBC and Radio-Canada con­tinue to per­form their vital role as national pub­lic ser­vice broadcasters.”

In the report of the Lib­eral Party we read among their com­ments on infra­struc­ture: “Agree­ment to include munic­i­pal ini­tia­tives for eco­nomic devel­op­ment, sport and recre­ational facil­i­ties such as parks, and cul­tural and other social infrastructure.”

On tax­a­tion: “Accel­er­ate the rate of increase for the basic per­sonal deduction.”

The Bloc Que­be­cois has the fol­low­ing rec­om­men­da­tions on cul­ture: “While sat­is­fied with the rec­om­men­da­tion to increase the fund­ing to the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts to $ 300 mil­lion over two years, the Bloc Que­be­cois is dis­ap­pointed that the Com­mit­tee refused to rec­om­mend that the fed­eral gov­ern­ment intro­duce a pro­gres­sive mea­sure already adopted by the Gov­ern­ment of Que­bec by elim­i­nat­ing the GST on books. Access to knowl­edge has such impor­tance in a world where the knowl­edge econ­omy dom­i­nates that it should be given.”

Finally, the NDP rec­om­mends in its dis­sent­ing report: “Increased sup­port for the arts and cul­tural and recre­ational ini­tia­tives to strengthen the com­pet­i­tive attrac­tion of com­mu­ni­ties through a vibrant social infrastructure.”

What Can I Do?

It is clear that the themes found in the recent release of the “Advan­tage Canada” plan will guide the sub­stance of the 2007 fed­eral bud­get. As men­tioned in our pre­vi­ous CCA bul­letin, the online con­sul­ta­tion for this doc­u­ment is open until Decem­ber 18 2006 and the CCA will be mak­ing a sub­mis­sion, in order to make the case for sit­u­at­ing out pol­icy pri­or­i­ties within the Government’s pro­posed “five advan­tages” — tax advan­tage, fis­cal advan­tage, entre­pre­neur­ial advan­tage, knowl­edge advan­tage, and infra­struc­ture advantage.

Don’t miss this oppor­tu­nity! This online con­sul­ta­tion pro­vides the arts and cul­ture sec­tor with yet another oppor­tu­nity to stress those issues which are crit­i­cal to the health and the growth of our shared cre­ative life in Canada. In the mean­time, CCA mem­bers and sup­port­ers are also encour­aged to write to the Min­is­ter of Finance and the Prime Min­is­ter, the Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper, in sup­port of rec­om­men­da­tions 21 through 23, as it is nec­es­sary to ensure that the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance’s pro­pos­als be reflected in the Government’s fis­cal agenda come bud­get time.