CCA Bul­letin 26/11

August 11, 2011

Just the Facts

Today, the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA) sub­mit­ted its 2012 pre-budget sub­mis­sion to the House of Com­mons’ Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance. In con­sul­ta­tion with our mem­ber­ship, we encour­age the gov­ern­ment to main­tain and if pos­si­ble, increase its invest­ments in Cana­dian artis­tic cre­ativ­ity, a renew­able, non-polluting nat­ural resource that con­tributes greatly to the econ­omy, to our qual­ity of life and to our stand­ing in the world.

Tell me more

The CCA has taken a rea­soned stance as to why the fed­eral gov­ern­ment should invest in arts, cul­ture and her­itage. This sec­tor makes a strong con­tri­bu­tion to the Cana­dian econ­omy, and must be sup­ported in order to cre­ate more jobs and induce cre­ative growth within the knowl­edge econ­omy.  The CCA’s argu­ments echo this state­ment recently made by the Min­is­ter of Cana­dian Her­itage, James Moore:

“To invest in arts and cul­ture and to sup­port the cre­ative econ­omy is to sup­port the econ­omy as a whole.” (The Hon. James Moore, Her­itage Min­is­ter, on CBC’s Q, Tues­day, July 12, 2011)

The CCA’s 2012 sub­mis­sion is framed around the themes set by the stand­ing com­mit­tee, namely: how to achieve sus­tained eco­nomic recov­ery in Canada; how to cre­ate qual­ity sus­tain­able jobs; how to ensure rel­a­tively low rates of tax­a­tion; and, how to achieve a bal­anced budget.

The CCA pro­posed three rec­om­men­da­tions in its sub­mis­sion, the limit set by the committee:

• Main­tain, and if pos­si­ble, increase the bud­get of the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts to $300 mil­lion as soon as possible;

• Invest $40 mil­lion of new money into domes­tic tour­ing and the devel­op­ment of for­eign markets;

• Change the rules for Reg­is­tered Retire­ment Sav­ing Plans to allow self-employed work­ers to use the year of rev­enue being taxed to be the ref­er­ence year for estab­lish­ing the level of RRSP contribution.

The CCA also points to the fact that the gov­ern­ment has other tools it can use to bol­ster the cul­tural sector’s con­tri­bu­tion to the Cana­dian econ­omy. First and fore­most is to include the devel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion of Cana­dian con­tent in the national dig­i­tal strat­egy.  The CCA adds that an eco­nomic strat­egy focused on sus­tain­abil­ity must respect intel­lec­tual prop­erty. This means that we must mod­ern­ize the Copy­right Act in such a way that artists and cre­ators, like other intel­lec­tual work­ers, receive fair pay­ment for their inno­va­tion and creativity.

Sec­ondly, the CCA sub­mits that like all other divi­sions of the Cana­dian econ­omy, the arts and cul­ture sec­tor and dif­fer­ent lev­els of gov­ern­ment need accu­rate and timely sta­tis­tics to plan and eval­u­ate poli­cies and pro­grams. The reg­u­lar­ity of labour mar­ket data, export activ­ity and new forms of cul­tural activ­ity are essen­tial instru­ments to cul­ti­vate what is cer­tain to become a dom­i­nant post-industrial ele­ment of the Cana­dian econ­omy. It is the CCA’s hope that the gov­ern­ment will con­tinue to sup­port Sta­tis­tics Canada and the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage in devel­op­ing a satel­lite account for cul­ture as has been done for tourism, trans­port and the vol­un­tary sector.

What can I do?

Read our pre-budget sub­mis­sion and write a let­ter to the Clerk of the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance to sup­port the CCA’s rec­om­men­da­tions. Do not delay. The dead­line is tomor­row, August 12 at 5 pm!