Special Budget Edition: A First Look at the Federal Budget

We are very proud to present this spe­cial fed­eral bud­get edi­tion. Our in depth bud­get analy­sis will be pub­lished in a few weeks when the Her­itage Min­is­ter pub­lishes the esti­mates and report on plans and pri­or­i­ties. Nor­mally the gov­ern­ment announces the plans and pri­or­i­ties before the fed­eral bud­get drops, but not this year. Spe­cific impacts are begin­ning to emerge as to which pro­grams are being main­tained, but there is no guar­an­tee that pri­or­i­ties will remain the same. Sev­eral signs are already vis­i­ble; oth­ers will accu­mu­late over the weeks and months.

The scale of the cuts to the CBC is sure to have an impact on the whole of the sec­tor. The cuts, which will add up to $200 mil­lion after all is said, will def­i­nitely have an impact for artists, pro­duc­ers and our mem­bers. Just because the Canada Coun­cil was not cut doesn’t mean that artists aren’t affected; they are, and will be even more so once deci­sions are final­ized and made pub­lic. Our Fea­tured Mem­ber, Erika Beatty from Nova Sco­tia Sym­phony, brings up these same concerns.

One pro­gram that is a vic­tim of the cuts is par­tic­u­larly close to the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts and the Coali­tion for Cul­tural Diver­sity. The Coali­tion will be dis­cussing this new sit­u­a­tion at their gen­eral assem­bly on the 1^st of June. “For now, it is cer­tain that the activ­i­ties of the coali­tion will be reduced to their sim­plest form to make the tran­si­tion as smooth as pos­si­ble,” affirmed the gen­eral direc­tor, Charles Vallerand. The pro­gram will offi­cially end in March of 2013 and each orga­ni­za­tion has been informed of what they will receive this year. We invite you to read the mes­sage from the pres­i­dent of the CCA, Kath­leen Sharpe, who explains our vision on this topic.

Sup­port for artists was main­tained but sup­port for cre­ators has diminished

The ‘Cre­ators’ Assis­tance’ com­po­nent of the Canada Music Fund will be com­pletely cut next year. This is a mil­lion dol­lars less for music cre­ators. The money, admin­is­tered by the SOCAN Foun­da­tion helps asso­ci­a­tions to offer ser­vices such as train­ing and mentoring.

Among the biggest ben­e­fi­cia­ries we high­light the Song­writ­ers Asso­ci­a­tion of Canada ($ 260,000), SPACQ ($ 230,000), The Screen Com­posers Guild of Canada ($ 172,000), and the Cana­dian Music Cen­tre ($ 160,000). For an orga­ni­za­tion like the Soci­ety of Pro­fes­sional Com­posers and Song­writ­ers of Que­bec (SPACQ) this is an ampu­ta­tion of 40% of its budget.

Library and Archives Canada

We were unable to get details on the way the Library and Archives will be han­dling the cuts of $9.6 mil­lion over the next three years. This cut rep­re­sents more than 8% of the agency’s bud­get on top of hav­ing to absorb the costs of infla­tion, and threat­ens to fur­ther under­mine this institution’s man­date, which is to pre­serve and make avail­able the social and cul­tural his­toric her­itage of Canada.

Anne-Marie Des Roches