The CCA Publishes its Annual Analysis of the Federal Budget

CCA Bul­letin 24/08

July 17, 2008

 

Main find­ings

The CCA pub­lishes today its 2008 Bud­get Analy­sis in which it exam­ines fed­eral fund­ing from 2007/08 to 2008/09 to the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage (DCH), cul­tural agen­cies and crown corporations.

After almost three years, it is still dif­fi­cult to estab­lish what posi­tion the gov­ern­ment may take towards cul­ture as sig­nif­i­cant fund­ing reduc­tions might be forth­com­ing given the known gov­ern­ment pri­or­i­ties, the down­turn in the econ­omy and the dis­ap­pear­ance of bud­getary sur­pluses result­ing from, in par­tic­u­lar, cuts to the GST.

A num­ber of key find­ings emerge. First, sta­bil­ity seems to be the oper­a­tive word: over­all fund­ing lev­els held very steady in Bud­get 2008, as vir­tu­ally all orga­ni­za­tions exam­ined in this analy­sis did not see a fund­ing change of more than four per­cent, and addi­tional expen­di­tures may accrue to the sec­tor through the sup­ple­men­tary esti­mates process. This is undoubt­edly good news for the sec­tor. Sec­ond, fund­ing to key grants and con­tri­bu­tion pro­grams at the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage also remained quite steady, with the notable excep­tion of Cana­dian Cul­ture On-line, which was cut com­pletely (and some­what unex­pect­edly) in Bud­get 2008.

The analy­sis con­firms also that the gov­ern­ment appears to favour a greater role for the pri­vate sec­tor in the cul­tural domain and an inter­est in locat­ing national cul­tural insti­tu­tions out­side of the National Cap­i­tal Region, most recently through the process to iden­tify the loca­tion of the Por­trait Gallery of Canada, but also with respect to the Cana­dian Museum for Human Rights.

There are very real con­cerns over the government’s appar­ent reori­en­ta­tion of approach to the cul­tural sec­tor and the lack of trans­parency and pre­dictabil­ity in decision-making, par­tic­u­larly when it comes to arts and cul­ture. Cul­ture does not fig­ure among the government’s pri­or­i­ties, and the appetite for large-scale pol­icy decision-making and long-term com­mit­ments within the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage appear to have waned, as attested by the fact that one is still wait­ing for a new muse­ums pol­icy close to four years after this had made the object of a broadly based con­sen­sus amongst all polit­i­cal par­ties and respec­tive stakeholders.

What is not of a nature to reas­sure either is the fact that much of the new fund­ing to the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage over the last three years has accrued to sport (largely for the Van­cou­ver 2010 Olympics) and new cul­tural pro­grams tar­get­ing community-based events at the local level. In addi­tion, while the Depart­ment indi­cates it will seek renewal for most pro­grams com­pris­ing what used to be known as Tomor­row Starts Today, these com­mit­ments are in no way guar­an­tees, as gov­ern­ments can reverse their inten­tions at a moment’s notice.

Tell me more

More specif­i­cally, the analy­sis shows that begin­ning with the Main Esti­mates, over­all depart­men­tal expen­di­tures are set to grow this fis­cal year over last (these fig­ures must be inter­preted with cau­tion as they do not include expen­di­tures in the sup­ple­men­tary esti­mates). While this is undoubt­edly wel­come news for the Depart­ment, it masks the dis­tri­b­u­tion of expen­di­ture changes across the var­i­ous Pro­gram Activ­i­ties. As indi­cated in the Plans and Pri­or­i­ties of the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage for 2008–2009, the Depart­ment pur­sues two broad objec­tives, expressed in terms of strate­gic outcomes;

• “Cana­di­ans express and share their diverse cul­tural expe­ri­ences with each other and the world.”

To achieve this out­come, the Depart­ment “helps to ensure that Cana­di­ans can express their cre­ativ­ity, show­case their tal­ents, and share their diverse expe­ri­ences via the arts, her­itage insti­tu­tions and sport activ­i­ties, both ama­teur and professional.”

and

• “Canada is an inclu­sive soci­ety built on inter­cul­tural under­stand­ing and cit­i­zen participation.”

The Depart­ment seeks to achieve this out­come by “pro­vid­ing pro­gram­ming in sup­port of socio-economic inclu­sion for dis­ad­van­taged groups such as off-reserve Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ple and offi­cial lan­guage minor­ity com­mu­ni­ties, but also exchange and dia­logue on shared cit­i­zen­ship val­ues between Cana­di­ans of all ori­gins and backgrounds.”

The largest increase ($46.1 mil­lion) accrues to the Department’s sec­ond Strate­gic Out­come, which does not include pro­gram­ming for the arts, her­itage or cul­tural indus­tries. On the other hand, expen­di­tures on the first Strate­gic Out­come, where pro­gram­ming for the arts, her­itage and cul­tural indus­tries occurs, decline from 2007/08 to 2008/09 by $17.8 mil­lion, with increases to some Pro­gram Sub-Activities (an addi­tional $1.7 mil­lion and $19.5 mil­lion, respec­tively to ‘Preser­va­tion of Canada’s her­itage’ and ‘Access to Canada’s cul­ture’) and decreases to oth­ers (declines of $1.5 mil­lion and $37.5 mil­lion, respec­tively, to ‘Cana­dian con­tent and per­for­mance excel­lence’ and ‘Sus­tain­abil­ity of cul­tural expres­sion and participation’).

Over­all changes in spend­ing at the Depart­ment appear to be priv­i­leg­ing its sec­ond Strate­gic Out­come over its first. While in 2007/08, the pro­por­tion of over­all depart­men­tal fund­ing to the first Strate­gic Out­come was 57.0%, this fig­ure declined in 2008/09 to 54.6%. While this decline is small, it will be impor­tant for the sec­tor to mon­i­tor these fig­ures on an ongo­ing basis given that depart­men­tal spend­ing on the arts, her­itage, and cul­tural indus­tries is under­taken through Strate­gic Out­come 1. These con­cerns are fuelled by the fur­ther real­iza­tion that there appear to be some fairly sub­stan­tial fund­ing declines on the hori­zon, par­tic­u­larly for the Department’s first Strate­gic Out­come, which is slated to drop from $759.7 mil­lion in 2008/09 to $624.3 mil­lion in 2009/10 and $454.7 mil­lion in 2010/11. These declines are related to the slew of pro­grams com­ing up for renewal over the next two years and if they were real­ized, the pro­por­tion of over­all depart­men­tal spend­ing on its first Strate­gic Out­come would drop to 52.6% in 2009/10 and to 46.6% in 2010/11. These fig­ures must there­fore be inter­preted with extreme cau­tion as Par­lia­ment only votes on the annual Main Esti­mates (2008/09), so Planned Spend­ing is sub­ject to change between now and 2009/10, includ­ing through pro­gram renewals.

As the CCA indi­cated in a pre­vi­ous bul­letin, over the next two years, $342.3 mil­lion worth of pro­gram fund­ing will sun­set and will have to be pre­sented to Trea­sury Board and to the Cab­i­net for renewal. The CCA has con­tacted the depart­ment regard­ing these renewals to ascer­tain whether the Depart­ment plans to seek renewal of these pro­grams at the same (or increased/decreased) fund­ing lev­els, and whether it can pro­vide some indi­ca­tion as to the prob­a­bil­ity that it will seek renewal for those pro­grams indi­cated as pos­si­bly being renewed, namely the Book Pub­lish­ing Indus­try Devel­op­ment Pro­gram and the National Arts Train­ing Con­tri­bu­tion Program.

The Department’s response con­firms that com­mit­ments to renew pro­grams must not be viewed as guar­an­tees: even for those pro­grams for which the RPP indi­cates Cana­dian Her­itage will seek renewal, the Depart­ment states that “it would not be appro­pri­ate to com­ment on the prob­a­bil­ity of fund­ing renewal at the cur­rent time and states fur­ther that renewal is con­tin­gent on var­i­ous fac­tors, includ­ing gov­ern­ment priorities”.

For the spe­cific case of the Book Pub­lish­ing Indus­try Devel­op­ment Pro­gram, the pro­gram is under­go­ing a pro­gram eval­u­a­tion to assess its rel­e­vance and effec­tive­ness ‘in deliv­er­ing results and ser­vices for Cana­di­ans.’ The deci­sion as to whether or not to go for­ward with fund­ing renewal for this pro­gram (and if so, at what level) awaits com­ple­tion of the eval­u­a­tion. In the case of the National Arts Train­ing Con­tri­bu­tion Pro­gram, the pro­gram was renewed for a five-year period in Sep­tem­ber 2007 to March 2013 (for some rea­son, this was not reflected in the Department’s Report on Plans and Pri­or­i­ties).

We are also seek­ing con­fir­ma­tion if the renewal will include the $ 25 mil­lion allo­ca­tion to the Canada Coun­cil which came annu­ally under what used to be known as the Tomor­row Starts Today suite of pro­grams. We are await­ing word back from the depart­ment on this last most impor­tant query and will inform you of the result.