CCA Bul­letin 4/09

Feb­ru­ary 9 , 2009

Just the facts

It has been two weeks since the Min­is­ter of Finance, the Hon. James Fla­herty, unveiled the 2009 Fed­eral Bud­get.  This doc­u­ment con­tained $ 335 mil­lion in sup­port of cul­ture and the arts. The Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA) has been delv­ing into the announced fund­ing ini­tia­tives to bet­ter under­stand how this invest­ment trans­lates into sup­port for the arts and cul­ture sec­tor and what por­tion of the sums announced con­sti­tutes a new invest­ment as opposed to renewal of exist­ing bud­gets. The pic­ture should become clearer once the Main Esti­mates are made available.

In its pre-budget sub­mis­sion to the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance in August 2008 and in its eco­nomic stim­u­lus sub­mis­sion of Decem­ber, the CCA pointed with some con­cern to the num­ber of fund­ing pro­grams admin­is­tered by the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage sched­uled to expire at the end of March 2009 or March 2010. The CCA asked the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee to seek assur­ances from the Min­is­ter of Finance that these pro­grams would be renewed with their cur­rent or higher budgets.

In the bud­get doc­u­ments, we see that the Min­is­ter of Finance and the Min­is­ter of Cana­dian Her­itage deliv­ered with renewed fund­ing for the Cul­tural Spaces pro­gram, the National Arts Train­ing Con­tri­bu­tion Pro­gram, the New Media Fund, the Cana­dian Tele­vi­sion Fund, as well as sup­port for com­mu­nity news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines. Some of these pro­grams seem to have been renewed or increased on a per­ma­nent basis, oth­ers just for the next two years.

How Much New Money is Being Invested?

The ques­tion that the CCA has been try­ing to answer is how much of the $335 mil­lion is new fund­ing and how much is the result of pro­gram renewal.

In the case of Cul­tural Spaces, there is $ 30 mil­lion of new fund­ing for one year, with the fol­low­ing year seen as a renewal. It would also seem that these funds are largely des­ig­nated for projects in Toronto and Mon­treal and that none will be avail­able for much needed cul­tural infra­struc­ture projects in other com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try. These com­mu­ni­ties will how­ever be able to ren­o­vate and upgrade their sports and recre­ational infra­struc­tures through the $500 mil­lion the gov­ern­ment is ded­i­cat­ing to that pur­pose over the next two years. The CCA will con­tinue to advance the idea that in the con­text of eco­nomic stim­u­lus and of long-term invest­ments in the cre­ative sec­tor, much more infra­struc­ture invest­ments in arts and cul­ture sec­tor are required through­out the coun­try and not only in large urban centres,

The National Arts Train­ing Con­tri­bu­tion Pro­gram appears to be the clear win­ner in the bud­get, receiv­ing an addi­tional $ 7 mil­lion on what seems to be a per­ma­nent basis. The fol­low­ing year will see the pro­gram renewed at its $ 16.7 mil­lion level with another addi­tion of $7 mil­lion. The CCA can only rejoice that its plea for more fed­eral invest­ments in this field was heard.

Despite the silence on replac­ing Pro­mArt and Trade Routes, the Min­is­ter of Cana­dian Her­itage, the Hon, James Moore, has referred often to the $22.5 mil­lion of pro­gram­ming dol­lars avail­able to assist in the pro­mo­tion of Cana­dian artists, cre­ators and arts pro­fes­sion­als. The Minister’s Office has pro­vided a break­down of this amount which is as follows:

The refusal of the gov­ern­ment to con­sider invest­ing more in tour­ing despite sev­eral fact based rep­re­sen­ta­tions made by the sec­tor prob­a­bly con­sti­tutes the main dis­ap­point­ment with regards to the 2009 bud­get. The CCA will con­tinue to make rep­re­sen­ta­tions that $21 mil­lions cut through the abo­li­tion of Trade Routes ($9 mil­lions) and Pro­mArt ($10.6 mil­lion when one con­sid­ers the first cut of $5,8 mil­lion announced in 2006) need to be addressed to enable the sec­tor to develop new markets. The $ 25 mil­lion endow­ment for the Canada Prizes for the Arts and Cre­ativ­ity came as a total sur­prise to most and is rais­ing ques­tions all over the coun­try. The Prizes will be admin­is­tered by a yet to be cre­ated pri­vate sec­tor inter­na­tional board of direc­tors and will be based in Toronto. It will be an inter­na­tional tal­ent com­pe­ti­tion intended to fer­ret out the best and the bright­est young tal­ent from around the world. Cana­dian artists are also eli­gi­ble to com­pete for those Prizes sched­uled to launch in 2010. While it is dif­fi­cult to object to any money being ded­i­cated to arts and cul­ture, the fact that this is tar­get­ing mostly for­eign artists has been described by some as “the cherry on the cake we did not get”.

Once the Main Esti­mates are tabled, the CCA will pro­duce addi­tional infor­ma­tion on the 2009 Fed­eral Budget.

Tell Me More

The CCA has writ­ten to the Min­is­ter of Finance and the Min­is­ter of Cana­dian Her­itage thank­ing them for pro­vid­ing some finan­cial sta­bil­ity to the arts and cul­ture sec­tor. The CCA also indi­cated that the CCA would pro­vide updates to the Min­is­ters on how the sec­tor is weath­er­ing the eco­nomic downturn.

The CCA also expressed appre­ci­a­tion for the recog­ni­tion of the value of the sec­tor and its vul­ner­a­bil­ity in the Bud­get 2009 Eco­nomic Plan. The CCA sug­gests that addi­tional mea­sures might be con­sid­ered to achieve the objec­tive of the Gov­ern­ment “to help ensure as much sta­bil­ity as pos­si­ble for the sec­tor at a time when the sec­tor is fac­ing dif­fi­cult challenges.”

What Can I Do?

The CCA is attempt­ing to mon­i­tor the impact of the reces­sion on all parts of the arts and cul­ture sec­tor. If you have infor­ma­tion about how the econ­omy is affect­ing your work or the work of your orga­ni­za­tion, please share it with us. Send your input to Jes­sica Litwin.