The CCA’s 2009 Federal Budget Analysis: Finding Solid Ground?

CCA Bul­letin 22/09

Sep­tem­ber 10, 2009

 

 

Today the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA) pub­lishes its 2009 Bud­get Analy­sis which exam­ines fed­eral fund­ing for arts, cul­ture and her­itage from 2008/09 — 2009/10. This analy­sis looks at orga­ni­za­tional and fund­ing changes within the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage (DCH); fed­eral fund­ing of key pro­grams across the arts, her­itage and cul­tural agen­cies and indus­tries as well as crown agen­cies. It also cov­ers other note­wor­thy devel­op­ments affect­ing the sector.

The main find­ings

The title of the analy­sis (Find­ing solid ground?) seeks to cap­ture one of the main themes of the cul­tural sec­tor on a more solid finan­cial foot­ing with the recently announced five-year renewal of key cul­tural programs.

For some time now, partly because of polit­i­cal insta­bil­ity, the sec­tor has suf­fered from the absence of any gov­ern­men­tal vision or long-term strat­egy for cul­ture. As was men­tioned in pre­vi­ous CCA fed­eral bud­get analy­ses, fund­ing com­mit­ments of two years max­i­mum; the aban­don­ment of pre­vi­ous com­mit­ments (e.g. a new museum pol­icy or the revi­sion of CBC’s man­date); some sur­prise fund­ing ini­tia­tives not reflec­tive of any of the sector’s expressed pri­or­i­ties; the lack of coher­ence and trans­parency in decision-making, all of that led many observers to con­clude that the gov­ern­ment has no long-term vision for cul­ture, nei­ther domes­ti­cally nor on the inter­na­tional scene.

Last years’ reduc­tions to a num­ber of cul­tural pro­grams have made it even more dif­fi­cult to deter­mine the government’s inten­tions regard­ing cul­tural poli­cies. How­ever, the lat­est devel­op­ment seems to indi­cate that the fed­eral gov­ern­ment may be chang­ing its approach and that it rec­og­nizes the impor­tance of sta­ble multi-year fund­ing for the sec­tor. Hope­fully, this will sig­nal the begin­ning of a reflec­tion lead­ing to longer-term pol­icy devel­op­ment for this impor­tant sec­tor of activity.

Despite the global eco­nomic down­turn and finan­cial cri­sis, the gov­ern­ment has main­tained cul­tural spend­ing. Bud­get 2009 announced $535 mil­lion worth of fund­ing over two years to the arts, her­itage and cul­tural indus­tries. Of this amount, $276 mil­lion rep­re­sents new fund­ing spread over two years, with the remain­der con­sist­ing of pro­gram renewals.

$174 mil­lion rep­re­sents new fund­ing for the 2009/10 fis­cal year and is bro­ken down as follows:

• $30 mil­lion in addi­tional fund­ing to the Cul­tural Spaces Canada program,
• $7 mil­lion in addi­tional fund­ing to the National Arts Train­ing Con­tri­bu­tion Pro­gram,
• $50 mil­lion to sup­port mar­quee fes­ti­vals and tourism-promoting events,
• $25 mil­lion for cre­ation of the Canada Prizes for the Arts and Cre­ativ­ity,
• $60 mil­lion for upgrades to national his­toric sites,
• $2 mil­lion to draft a plan for the future of the Manège Mil­i­taire in Québec City.

Adding to this good news was the end of June announce­ment that the gov­ern­ment is renew­ing, at their cur­rent level of fund­ing, a num­ber of key cul­tural pro­grams and spend­ing for a period of five years, an announce­ment which caused some wel­come sur­prise. The total spend­ing com­mit­ment is $642 mil­lion from 2010/11 to 2014/15 is as follows:

• $33.8 mil­lion annu­ally to the Canada Cul­tural Invest­ment Fund (for­merly the Cana­dian Arts and Her­itage Sus­tain­abil­ity Program);
• $30 mil­lion in annual fund­ing to the Canada Cul­tural Spaces Fund (for­merly Cul­tural Spaces Canada);
• $18 mil­lion per year to the Canada Arts Pre­sen­ta­tion Fund (the pro­vi­sion­ally renamed Arts Pre­sen­ta­tion Canada pro­gram; includ­ing base fund­ing to this pro­gram, the annual total is $33.4 million);
• $27.6 mil­lion per year for the Canada Music Fund;
• an ongo­ing com­mit­ment of an addi­tional $25 mil­lion to the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts, which main­tains the Council’s total annual appro­pri­a­tion to $181 mil­lion for the next five years;
• finally, a follow-through on a Bud­get 2009 com­mit­ment: $24.1 mil­lion in annual fund­ing for five years to the Canada Arts Train­ing Fund (for­merly the National Arts Train­ing Con­tri­bu­tion Program).

While some impor­tant pro­grams for book pub­lish­ing are still wait­ing for sim­i­lar renewal, this announce­ment is excel­lent news for artists and arts orga­ni­za­tions and pro­vides invalu­able sta­bil­ity to the sec­tor for the com­ing years. It is also a stark con­trast to the $74 mil­lion of fund­ing cuts under­taken by the gov­ern­ment since April 2008. Last summer’s Strate­gic Review process resulted in $45 mil­lion in fund­ing reduc­tions, includ­ing cuts to a num­ber of com­po­nents of Cana­dian Cul­ture Online, cut­backs to the Cana­dian Arts and Her­itage Sus­tain­abil­ity Pro­gram, cut­backs in the audio­vi­sual sec­tor (the National Train­ing Pro­gram for the Film and Video Sec­tor, the Cana­dian Inde­pen­dent Film and Video Fund, and two com­po­nents of the Audio-Visual Preser­va­tion Trust of Canada), reduc­tions in book and peri­od­i­cal pub­lish­ing expen­di­tures (fund­ing reduc­tions to the Book Pub­lish­ing Indus­try Devel­op­ment Pro­gram and to the Canada Mag­a­zine Fund), and elim­i­na­tion of pro­gram fund­ing to the Arts Pro­mo­tion Pro­gram and Trade Routes. In fall 2008, a fur­ther $29 mil­lion was de facto cut when the gov­ern­ment decided to can­cel the project to con­struct a home for the Por­trait Gallery of Canada.

Tell me more

For this fis­cal year, look­ing at the ‘big pic­ture’ of fund­ing across the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage and the main gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tions in the sec­tor, over­all fund­ing lev­els in the 2009/10 Main Esti­mates and Sup­ple­men­tary Esti­mates A have expe­ri­enced a mod­est decline over last year’s Main Esti­mates fig­ures. Almost half of the orga­ni­za­tions expe­ri­enced small fund­ing increases (Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage, Canada Coun­cil for the Arts, Cana­dian Museum of Civ­i­liza­tion, National Museum of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­ogy and the National Film Board), three expe­ri­enced small fund­ing declines (Cana­dian Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, National Gallery of Canada and Tele­film Canada) and the remain­der expe­ri­enced sig­nif­i­cant declines due mainly to the con­clu­sion of fund­ing for one-time cap­i­tal projects (Library and Archives of Canada, National Arts Cen­tre and Cana­dian Museum of Nature).

This fis­cal year was the first for which the Cana­dian Museum for Human Rights received fund­ing in the Main Esti­mates. It must be noted that addi­tional fund­ing may accrue to the sec­tor through fur­ther sup­ple­men­tary esti­mates (Sup­ple­men­tary Esti­mates A have been released, but addi­tional sup­ple­men­tary expen­di­tures are likely forth­com­ing in the fall).

In 2009/10, the Depart­ment sub­stan­tially restruc­tured the way it con­ceives of and reports on its activ­i­ties. The new struc­ture rep­re­sents good news for the arts and cul­ture sec­tor because expen­di­tures on arts, cul­tural indus­tries and her­itage are now grouped under a sin­gle Strate­gic Out­come and totals for each item are pro­vided. Not only does this new struc­ture make more sense intu­itively, it also facil­i­tates track­ing year-over-year spend­ing changes in the arts, cul­tural indus­tries and her­itage sub-sectors. Of note, as of 2009/10, mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism pro­gram­ming has been trans­ferred from the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage to the Depart­ment of Cit­i­zen­ship and Immigration.

The Bud­get 2009 and pro­gram renewal announce­ments ben­e­fited exclu­sively the Department’s Strate­gic Out­come com­pris­ing the arts and cul­tural indus­tries. The pro­gram renewals pro­vide long-term sta­bil­ity for the arts sec­tor, but sub­stan­tial fund­ing declines appear to be on the hori­zon for the cul­tural indus­tries due largely to pro­gram in need of renewal. The Book Pub­lish­ing Indus­try Devel­op­ment Pro­gram, for exam­ple, is due for renewal in March 2010. The Depart­ment has not yet indi­cated whether it plans to renew this program.

Fund­ing to indi­vid­ual pro­grams within the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage remained rel­a­tively sta­ble, with the notable excep­tion of the pro­grams expe­ri­enc­ing fund­ing cuts due to the 2008 Strate­gic Review. Fund­ing declined to depart­men­tal pro­grams out­side of the cul­tural sec­tor, specif­i­cally fund­ing to sport.

What can I do? Look­ing for­ward to Bud­get 2010

Mov­ing on from the 2009 fed­eral bud­get, in August, the CCA sub­mit­ted its sub­mis­sion for the 2010 pre-budget con­sul­ta­tion.  This out­lined our goals for ensur­ing the sec­tor remain sta­ble, and able to con­tinue evolv­ing in the inno­v­a­tive fash­ion expected of arts and culture.