The 2009–2010 Main Estimates Provide an Imperfect Picture of Government Spending

CCA Bul­letin 7/09

March 2, 2009

Just the Facts

The Pres­i­dent of the Trea­sury Board, the Hon. Vic Toews, tabled the Main Esti­mates of Gov­ern­ment Spend­ing for 2009–2010 on Feb­ru­ary 26. 2009. Usu­ally, this doc­u­ment presents a rel­a­tively com­plete pic­ture of where spend­ing has increased or decreased through­out the entire net­work of gov­ern­ment depart­ments and agencies.

Per­haps because of the polit­i­cally tumul­tuous past few months and the unfore­seen eco­nomic cri­sis, these Main Esti­mates do not appear to reflect deci­sions and announce­ment made before and in the fed­eral bud­get of Jan­u­ary 27, 2009.

Due to these con­tin­gen­cies, the CCA has been informed that the other half of the puz­zle will appear in the Sup­ple­men­tary Esti­mates expected some time later this year.

Some exam­ples of the dis­con­nect can be found in the Cana­dian Her­itage esti­mates which show resources for Trade Routes in 2009-10 to be almost  $1.2 mil­lion even though the can­cel­la­tion of the pro­gram was announced last sum­mer. Sim­i­larly, the Main Esti­mates ascribe only $5.5 mil­lion to the Canada On-line pro­gram that, while ampu­tated last April of the Culture.ca, Culturescope.ca and the Cana­dian Mem­ory Fund, still includes amongst oth­ers the Canada New Media Fund,  which the Jan­u­ary 27 Bud­get announced would be renewed at its cur­rent level of $ 14,5 million.

It would there­fore be easy to sound the alarm based on the num­bers in the Main Esti­mates which the Depart­ment has cau­tioned are incom­plete. The rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of the 2009-10 fed­eral bud­get with the Main Esti­mates has yet to be achieved.

Accord­ingly, rather than present the incom­plete pic­ture of fed­eral invest­ments in the arts and cul­ture sec­tor found in the Main Esti­mates, the CCA will sus­pend any detailed analy­sis of these fig­ures until the Sup­ple­men­tary Esti­mates are released.

Until then, the arts and cul­ture sec­tor must rely on the com­mit­ments made by the Min­is­ter of Finance, the Hon. James Fla­herty, in the 2009-10 fed­eral bud­get to main­tain resource lev­els to sev­eral impor­tant pro­grams and to increase fund­ing in pro­grams iden­ti­fied in the bud­get doc­u­ments. It is also help­ful to quote from the Bud­get doc­u­ment itself:

“Cul­ture reflects who we are as a nation, how we see our­selves within our coun­try and how we appear to the world. Day to day, Cana­di­ans expe­ri­ence the essence of this rich and diverse coun­try through the imagery and worlds of its artists, through works that demon­strate the best of tal­ent. While resilient in many ways, the cul­tural sec­tor is plainly also vul­ner­a­ble to eco­nomic shocks. The Gov­ern­ment wants to help ensure as much sta­bil­ity as pos­si­ble for the sec­tor at a time when the sec­tor is fac­ing dif­fi­cult challenges.”

The CCA has com­mit­ted to inform the Min­is­ter of addi­tional mea­sures that the fed­eral gov­ern­ment should under­take to help the arts and cul­ture sec­tor weather the eco­nomic storm affect­ing Canada and the world and par­tic­i­pate fully in the cre­ative economy.