National Arts Center

Of the eight orga­ni­za­tions that were cut in the recent fed­eral bud­get, the reduc­tions to the National Arts Cen­tre have received very lit­tle reac­tion. The cut­backs to the orga­ni­za­tion may have been over­shad­owed by the much larger cuts to the CBC and the Her­itage Depart­ment and the fact that fund­ing was main­tained for the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts. However the cuts of $1.9 mil­lion over 3 years add up to just over 5% of the NAC’s bud­get — and this does not include hav­ing to cover infla­tion on salaries, goods and services.

Very few arts orga­ni­za­tions reacted to the cuts with much more than a brief men­tion that it had hap­pened among other high­lights of the bud­get.  One of the few to show strong dis­ap­point­ment was the Pro­fes­sional Asso­ci­a­tion of Cana­dian The­atres. “PACT is very con­cerned about this cut,” said Lucy White, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor. “The NAC plays a crit­i­cal role in our cul­tural land­scape. Reduc­tions could have a neg­a­tive impact on the the­atre com­mu­nity as a whole since the NAC is a major part­ner in many artis­tic endeav­ours across the country.”

The orga­ni­za­tion itself has kept mum how­ever and has not released an offi­cial press release. CEO and Pres­i­dent, Peter Her­rn­dorf was quoted how­ever by CBC news as say­ing “I sus­pect there will be some job reduc­tions, but we’ll try to min­i­mize that. A lot of that will be done through vacan­cies but our biggest chal­lenge is to make absolutely sure that the qual­ity of the pro­gram­ming is protected.”