“It’s Time” to Fund Culture in Canada

Bul­letin 8/05

Ottawa, Feb­ru­ary 17, 2005 — As Finance Min­is­ter Ralph Goodale unveils his first fed­eral budget

since the June 2004 elec­tion, there’s plenty of move­ment on all fronts to influ­ence how the

minor­ity Paul Mar­tin gov­ern­ment can spend the bil­lions in sur­pluses that have accumulated

over the past decade.  As the cul­tural sec­tor has spent much of that same decade wait­ing with

baited breath for the rul­ing Lib­er­als (past and present) to show us some­thing more visionary

than cau­tious and unsta­ble fund­ing pro­grams, next Wednesday’s bud­get bears particular

scrutiny for the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts and its members.

 

As always, the CCA will send mem­bers a Bul­letin fol­low­ing the read­ing of the bud­get in the

House at 4 pm on Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 23, 2005, with an imme­di­ate reac­tion to the federal

bud­get and how it affects the cul­tural sec­tor. This will be fol­lowed by a more thorough

analy­sis of the bud­get later in the spring.

Alter­na­tive Fed­eral Bud­get — “It’s Time”

 

The Cana­dian Cen­tre for Pol­icy Alter­na­tives (CCPA) released their annual Alter­na­tive Federal

Bud­get (AFB) this morn­ing in Ottawa, call­ing on the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to begin

redis­trib­ut­ing some of the $45 bil­lion in sur­plus they esti­mate that the feds will col­lect over the

next three years.

 

“It’s time to address crum­bling federal-provincial-territorial rela­tions and long-neglected

social pro­grams,” says Ellen Rus­sell, a senior econ­o­mist for the CCPA.

 

Titled “It’s Time”, this year’s AFB fea­tures a detailed chap­ter on the cul­tural sec­tor, to which

the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant time and exper­tise. The key

rec­om­men­da­tions made for cul­ture include:

 

• A five-year, $1 bil­lion exten­sion of Tomor­row Starts Today fund­ing, at $200 mil­lion per year
• A $250 mil­lion increase in fund­ing to the CBC over four years, con­di­tional on the

CBC’s pre­sen­ta­tion of a clear plan to use the fund­ing in the fol­low­ing ways:

• To pro­duce, com­mis­sion and pur­chase more TV drama and documentaries
• To sig­nif­i­cantly increase regional production
• To sup­port the work of inde­pen­dent Cana­dian creators
• To engage diverse communities
• To bring Cana­dian cre­ators to the Cana­dian audi­ence in new and inno­v­a­tive ways.
• Tax relief for artists, includ­ing a tax exemp­tion of up to $30,000 on copy­right  income and income aver­ag­ing over five years to a max­i­mum of $50,000
• Reform of the EI sys­tem to reflect the par­tic­u­lar needs of self-employed artists, mod­eled on the sys­tem of ben­e­fits cur­rently offered to fishers.
• The appoint­ment of a task force to address media con­cen­tra­tion, for­eign own­er­ship of Cana­dian cul­tural indus­tries, the bal­ance of trade in the cul­tural sec­tor and  Cana­dian con­tent regulation.

“I am very pleased to see the impor­tance of cul­ture in the Alter­na­tive Fed­eral Bud­get,” noted

CCA National Direc­tor Jean Malavoy. “We fully sup­port these rec­om­men­da­tions and believe it

is crit­i­cal that the gov­ern­ment responds accordingly.”

 

The full text of the AFB can be found on the CCPA’s web­site at www.policyalternatives.ca.

Que­bec arts groups pitch a fund­ing increase for the Canada Council

At a news con­fer­ence in Ottawa today, Bloc Québe­cois Cana­dian Her­itage critic Maka Kotto and le Mou­ve­ment pour les Arts et les let­tres (MAL), an umbrella group that rep­re­sents 20 provin­cial and regional cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions and 15,000 artists, called on the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to use a por­tion of the mul­ti­ple bil­lion dol­lar sur­plus to dou­ble the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts’ annual oper­at­ing bud­get to $300 mil­lion. In their press release, MAL noted that were it not for the addi­tional $25 mil­lion given to the Canada Coun­cil through Tomor­row Starts Today fund­ing, its base bud­get has been stag­nant since 2001.

“With­out a sub­stan­tial increase of the Canada Council’s bud­get,” the MAL press release notes, “the

finan­cial bur­den in the cul­tural sec­tor will once again be assumed by the cre­ators.”  CCA applauds MAL’s

advo­cacy on this issue, which was part of le Bloc’s June 2004 elec­tion platform.

BC gets the ball rolling on increased cul­tural spending

Per­haps Mr. Goodale could take a page from his new col­league in British Colum­bia, Colin Hansen, who

unveiled a pre-election bud­get titled “Bal­anced Bud­get 2005″ on Tues­day. The BC gov­ern­ment announced their inten­tion to increase the British Colum­bia Arts Coun­cil bud­get by $3 mil­lion, and revealed plans for a $25 mil­lion Arts and Cul­ture Endow­ment Fund.  This fund will dis­trib­ute money to arts groups to help them, “lever­age pri­vate sec­tor sup­port to build endow­ments for arts and cul­ture orga­ni­za­tions”. The time­line and details for the dis­tri­b­u­tion of these funds are still unclear, but it is encour­ag­ing when some gov­ern­ments make increased lev­els of cul­tural spend­ing a pri­or­ity, even in times of fis­cal belt-tightening.

Ros­ter changes for the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Cana­dian Heritage

It’s time to update your Par­lia­men­tary score­cards. In order to accom­mo­date shift­ing sched­ules of some

MPs, the Lib­eral cau­cus has report­edly made a two-for-two swap of mem­bers in the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Cana­dian Her­itage. The new mem­bers will be Lib­er­als David Smith, MP for Pon­tiac (Que­bec), and Mario Silva, MP for Dav­en­port (Ontario). They replace Lib­er­als Wajid Khan, MP for Mississauga-Streetsville, and Pablo Rodriguez, MP for Honoré-Mercier.  Mr. Smith and Mr. Silva have a steep learn­ing curve ahead of them, as the Session’s cur­rent agenda—which includes cross-country fea­ture film indus­try hear­ings, impend­ing copy­right reform leg­is­la­tion, the government’s new response to the 2003 Lin­coln report on broad­cast­ing, among many other issues—is one of the most ambi­tious of all House of Com­mons committees.

Elec­tions con­tinue for the CCA Board of Governors

The board of gov­er­nors elec­tions con­tinue online at the CCA’s elec­tion web­site (www.ccarts.ca/vote).

Vot­ing is open to CCA mem­bers, and the polls will stay open until Feb­ru­ary 25, 2005.

Biogra­phies and state­ments of intent from the 16 can­di­dates appear in the cur­rent issue of Bliz­zart, as well as on the elec­tion web­site. An instruc­tion sheet with your user­name and pass­word that allow you to log into the elec­tion site was also sent along with your copy of Bliz­zart. If you require any additional

assis­tance with the vot­ing process, please con­tact Julie Cay­ou­ette at the CCA by email at

julie.cayouette@ccarts.ca or by phone at (613) 238‑3561 ext. 20.

If you are not a CCA mem­ber but would like to vote in the board of gov­er­nors elec­tions, we encourage

you to join the CCA. For more infor­ma­tion on CCA mem­ber­ship please visit the mem­ber­ship page at the

CCA web­site (www.ccarts.ca/en/members/join/), or con­tact Jes­sica Pan­coe, CCA Membership