CCA Bul­letin 29/06

Ottawa, Fri­day July 21, 2006

Just the Facts

The Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA) is pleased to announce that our annual in-depth analy­sis of the Fed­eral Bud­get is now avail­able for order­ing. This cur­rent bul­letin presents the polit­i­cal con­text of the bud­get analy­sis. High­lights of the Fed­eral Bud­get Analy­sis will be given in fol­low­ing bul­letins and through our upcom­ing online inter­ac­tive mag­a­zine CCA @gora.

CCA’s Annual Bud­get Analy­sis exam­ines fed­eral fund­ing to the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage (DCH), cul­tural agen­cies and crown cor­po­ra­tions in Cana­dian Heritage’s port­fo­lio; orga­ni­za­tional and fund­ing changes within DCH ; fed­eral fund­ing of key pro­grams across the arts, her­itage and cul­tural indus­tries, and other note­wor­thy devel­op­ments. A num­ber of key find­ings emerge in the analy­sis of the 2006 fed­eral bud­get, the first intro­duced by the new minor­ity government.

Tell Me More.

As men­tio ned in CCA Bul­letin 23/06, the fed­eral bud­get pre­sented on May 2 by Min­is­ter of Finance the Hon. Jim Fla­herty did con­tain some mod­est good news for the arts and cul­tural sec­tor. How­ever, the 2006 fed­eral bud­get analy­sis by the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts cap­tures the sense of lin­ger­ing uneasi­ness many in the sec­tor feel in the cur­rent period.

While over­all fund­ing lev­els rise mod­estly in Bud­get 2006, many are con­cer ned this may be a period of calm before the prover­bial storm. Stephen Harper’s recently elected minor­ity gov­ern­ment is focus­ing and deliv­er­ing on a lim­ited num­ber of pri­or­i­ties (none of which directly tar­get the cul­tural sec­tor) and are avoid­ing dras­tic change in other pol­icy areas. With the party’s pop­u­lar­ity grow­ing in pub­lic opin­ion polls, there is a ques­tion on many minds: How would cul­ture fare under a major­ity Con­ser­v­a­tive government?

It is not clear what the answer to this ques­tion might be at this time, although there is some cause for con­cern. The government’s com­mon refrain is that key cul­tural pro­grams and insti­tu­tions — notably the CBC — are “under review” and will be sub­ject to con­sul­ta­tion with Cana­di­ans. To date, how­ever, the con­sul­ta­tion style of the gov­ern­ing Con­ser­v­a­tives is less ful­some, com­pre­hen­sive and mean­ing­ful than many in the sec­tor — indeed in many other sec­tors of Cana­dian civil soci­ety — would desire. In this con­text, it is dif­fi­cult to feel assured about the future of fed­eral cul­tural pol­icy, and pro­grams and it is more impor­tant than ever for those in the cul­tural sec­tor to impress upon the gov­ern­ment the sig­nif­i­cance of cul­tural pol­icy and pro­gram­ming to Canada.

Another rea­son for con­cern is that w hile the appoint­ment of the Hon. Bev Oda as Min­is­ter of Cana­dian Her­itage was wel­come news given her active sup­port of the cul­tural sec­tor as Cana­dian Her­itage Critic while in Oppo­si­tion, the CCA notes that of the five decision-making com­mit­tees put in place by the Prime Min­is­ter, Min­is­ter Oda has only been appointed as a mem­ber of the Social Affairs Com­mit­tee. This lim­its sub­stan­tially the capac­ity for a cul­tural lens to be applied to pol­icy in sec­tors beyond social affairs — notably those related to eco­nomic growth, infra­struc­ture, inter­na­tional trade nego­ti­a­tions and for­eign affairs.

Now turn­ing to the fed­eral bud­get itself, the first thing to note is that while cul­tural fund­ing lev­els rise mod­estly in 2006/07, it is cru­cial to bear in mind that there were no Sup­ple­men­tary Esti­mates in fis­cal year 2005/06. Addi­tional expen­di­tures in 2005/06 were made through Gov­er­nor General’s Spe­cial War­rants and these incre­men­tal amounts have been included in this year’s Main Esti­mates. As such, fund­ing increases must be inter­preted with cau­tion as they include expen­di­tures under­taken last fis­cal year.

Sec­ond, expen­di­ture com­mit­ments made under the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment will not nec­es­sar­ily be upheld by the cur­rent gov­ern­ment, as demon­strated by the deci­sion to sig­nif­i­cantly scale back the fund­ing increases to the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts and not chang­ing those of the National Arts Train­ing Con­tri­bu­tion Pro­gram, the National Arts Cen­tre and the Con­fed­er­a­tion Cen­tre of the Arts, promised increases which have dis­ap­peared alto­gether in the May 2 Bud­get. The National Muse­ums pol­icy is also con­spic­u­ously absent from the Bud­get and as recent news items indi­cate, there is grow­ing con­cern that the plan ned Por­trait Gallery of Canada will be moth­balled. Sim­i­larly, the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment renewed the Tomor­row Starts Today ini­tia­tive for a five-year period (2005/06 to 2009/10). While the gov­ern­ment main­tai ned Tomor­row Starts Today fund­ing lev­els for fis­cal year 2006/07, the fate of the pro­gram into the future is some­what unclear. There is there­fore a legit­i­mate cause for con­cern, par­tic­u­larly given Ms. Oda’s cur­rent review of all pro­grams in her Depart­ment, a review which is sup­posed to be com­pleted by September.

Last, there are signs of a dif­fer­ent — and pos­si­bly trou­ble­some — approach to cul­ture under the Con­ser­v­a­tives. Party MPs’ state­ments in the House of Com­mons and in the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Cana­dian Her­itage empha­size free­dom of choice, reliance on the pri­vate sec­tor, and con­sumer choice in cul­tural pol­icy. Could this be set­ting the stage for a sig­nif­i­cant with­drawal, reori­en­ta­tion of pro­gram­ming, or reduc­tion in fund­ing to the cul­tural sec­tor? Are we head­ing towards a model where the fed­eral gov­ern­ment may facil­i­tate dona­tions and sup­port to arts and cul­ture, but con­sid­ers this fund­ing respon­si­bil­ity to rest essen­tially with the pri­vate sec­tor and with indi­vid­u­als? No doubt that the com­ing sev­eral months will pro­vide answers to such de-stabilizing ques­tions and the CCA will be present for what­ever debates emerge.

What Can I Do?

The CCA Analy­sis pro­vides mem­bers, as well as pol­icy and deci­sion mak­ers, with insights regard­ing the “big pic­ture” of fed­eral fund­ing lev­els to arts, cul­ture, and her­itage, i.e. Where is the money going? How will expen­di­ture review affect the sec­tor? How are indi­vid­ual pro­grams work­ing? The doc­u­ment also offers a detailed exam­i­na­tion of cru­cial fund­ing issues, trends, chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties on a sub-sectoral basis, with ref­er­ence to spe­cific programs.

This bud­get analy­sis pro­ceeds in four sec­tions. The first ana­lyzes ‘the big pic­ture’ by dis­cussing over­all fed­eral fund­ing lev­els. The sec­ond focuses on the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage, exam­in­ing its orga­ni­za­tional struc­ture and pro­gram expen­di­tures. The third sec­tion under­takes a detailed analy­sis of expen­di­tures across cul­tural sub-sectors, bring­ing for­ward the main changes, chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties. The final sec­tion explores a range of devel­op­ments in the cul­tural sec­tor beyond expen­di­tures (e.g. leg­isla­tive changes, reg­u­la­tory amend­ments, other pol­icy ini­tia­tives with poten­tial impli­ca­tions for the cul­tural sec­tor, etc…).

Orga­ni­za­tions or indi­vid­u­als inter­ested in acquir­ing the full text of the doc­u­ment can do so by com­plet­ing the pub­li­ca­tions order form located on our web­site.