Other Consequences of the Federal Budget

CCA Bul­letin 07/12

April 27, 2012

In the wake of the bud­get pre­sented on March 29, Finance Min­is­ter Jim Fla­herty tabled yes­ter­day a Bill that puts into place some the bud­get ini­tia­tives. Food inspec­tion has attracted a great deal of atten­tion but in the cul­tural sec­tor there are two mea­sures in par­tic­u­lar that we would like to highlight.

Dis­so­lu­tion of the Cana­dian Artists and Pro­duc­ers Pro­fes­sional Rela­tions Tri­bunal (CAPPRT)

The dis­so­lu­tion of the CAPPRT was not a major sur­prise, although it had not been hinted at. It hadn’t been announced in the bud­get, but it had been expected to hap­pen sooner or later. While the CAPPRT’s respon­si­bil­i­ties will be trans­ferred to the Canada Indus­trial Rela­tions Board, the Sta­tus of the Artist Act will still be the basis of the deci­sion. In fact, the only amend­ment to the Act con­sists in replac­ing the word Tri­bunal with the word Board. When asked about this issue, our mem­bers, agreed that the fact that the Sta­tus of the Artist Act remains the basis of the deci­sion mak­ing mit­i­gates con­cerns that the needs of the cul­tural sec­tor may not be heard. It is worth not­ing that in Québec, the Com­mis­sion for the recog­ni­tion of artists’ asso­ci­a­tions and pro­duc­ers asso­ci­a­tions (CRAAAP) was trans­ferred to the Labour Rela­tions Com­mis­sion in 2009 and it seems that stake­hold­ers are rea­son­ably sat­is­fied with the results.

Nonethe­less sev­eral of the play­ers in the cul­tural sec­tor would at least like to see some of the exper­tise on the Tri­bunal trans­ferred to the Canada Indus­trial Rela­tions Board. The Her­itage Min­is­ter was the one who named the mem­bers of the Tri­bunal, and although they did not all have expe­ri­ence in the arts, and this fact alone pro­vided some com­fort to stake­hold­ers. The cul­tural sec­tor would be pleased to see the staff of the Tri­bunal trans­ferred to the Board in order to ensure a smooth tran­si­tion that would be con­sis­tent with the spirit of the Sta­tus of the Artist Act.

We are still not clear on when the Tri­bunal will be dis­solved but tran­si­tion mea­sures have been put in place. Processes still in progress with the Tri­bunal will be trans­ferred to the Board and con­sid­ered as part of their portfolio.

In short, no fear for chaos at this point.

Char­i­ta­ble Organizations

The Bill also con­firms the announce­ments made in the bud­get regard­ing changes to the reg­u­la­tions relat­ing to char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions. There are mod­i­fi­ca­tions to the rules on reg­is­ter­ing a for­eign char­ity as a qual­i­fied donee; changes to rules used to deter­mine the extent to which a char­ity has exer­cised polit­i­cal activ­i­ties, and mea­sures giv­ing the Min­is­ter of Rev­enue the author­ity to sus­pend the priv­i­lege of issu­ing tax receipts for any reg­is­tered char­ity that vio­lates cer­tain regulations.

The Bill expands the def­i­n­i­tion of polit­i­cal activ­ity to include gift­ing to a donee to sup­port polit­i­cal activ­i­ties and pro­vides some fur­ther reg­u­la­tions in regard to how funds may be dis­persed to qual­i­fied donees. The CCA will be mon­i­tor­ing the changes and will keep you informed on the impacts for char­i­ta­ble organizations.