CCA Bul­letin 49/08

Novem­ber 25, 2008

Just the Facts

As bad news on the econ­omy keeps rolling in, arts orga­ni­za­tions and insti­tu­tions are begin­ning to feel the pinch as endow­ments are fail­ing to gen­er­ate income.

Endow­ment funds have been pro­moted by the fed­eral and some provin­cial gov­ern­ments as a pru­dent way to build finan­cial secu­rity and pro­mote longer-term plan­ning. In Saturday’s edi­tion of the Globe and Mail, jour­nal­ist James Brad­shaw fea­tured an exten­sive look at how the dis­mal per­for­mance of the stock mar­kets is plac­ing new pres­sures on arts orga­ni­za­tions. One exam­ple amongst many: the National Bal­let of Canada is pro­ject­ing a $ 900,000. 00 short­fall in bud­geted rev­enues due to the cur­rent mar­ket downturn.

It is not just front-line arts orga­ni­za­tions that are deal­ing with income short­falls. The Canada Coun­cil for the Arts ded­i­cates a per­cent­age of the income earned by its endow­ment to oper­at­ing costs and grants. Sev­eral endowed Canada Coun­cil prizes will also likely be affected, per­haps result­ing in lower prize amounts or in some cases, delays in the awards them­selves. It is impor­tant to note that the Canada Coun­cil has not indi­cated how or if the eco­nomic sit­u­a­tion has affected its oper­a­tions, grants, or prizes.

Beyond the arts, the rest of the econ­omy is also try­ing to cope with this major eco­nomic tsunami, to the point where the Min­is­ter of Finance, the Hon. James Fla­herty, has asked for sug­ges­tions as to how best to stim­u­late the lag­ging econ­omy. Given the fact that cre­at­ing jobs in the arts and cul­ture sec­tor costs a frac­tion of what it costs to cre­ate jobs in the indus­trial sec­tor, it would seem that a good strat­egy would be to invest in that impor­tant seg­ment of the cre­ative econ­omy to see rapid returns.

The CCA is prepar­ing a memo to Mr. Fla­herty built around a num­ber of key pro­pos­als, including:

• The cre­ation of a national mentorship/internship pro­gram to facil­i­tate suc­ces­sion plan­ning within the arts, cul­tural indus­tries, and her­itage sec­tors. This would gen­er­ate new jobs, address the longer-term needs of the sec­tor and could be deployed very quickly. The price tag would be in the tens of mil­lions, but still a far more cer­tain invest­ment than $ 3 bil­lion for the auto industry.

• A Multi-platform Cana­dian Con­tent Fund to stim­u­late cre­ation of Cana­dian cul­tural con­tent for any pro­duc­tion or dis­tri­b­u­tion tech­nol­ogy would serve sev­eral key pub­lic pol­icy objec­tives and unleash the cre­ativ­ity and inno­va­tion within the cre­ative economy.

• The cre­ation of an inter­na­tional cul­tural mar­ket­ing strat­egy to per­mit pro­duc­ers, cre­ators and arts pro­fes­sion­als in all art forms to build mar­kets and audi­ences for Cana­dian cre­ative and artis­tic pro­duc­tions. The strat­egy would sal­vage some of the impor­tant oppor­tu­ni­ties to pro­mote Cana­dian cul­ture that have been lost through the can­cel­la­tion of Pro­mArts and TradeR­outes.

• The estab­lish­ment of a national cul­tural research strat­egy that pro­vides bet­ter data on cul­tural labour mar­ket trends, audi­ences, new mar­kets, diver­sity and eco­nomic impact of gov­ern­ments’ invest­ment in the arts, cul­tural indus­tries, and her­itage sec­tor. Over the past sev­eral years, suc­ces­sive bud­get cuts at Sta­tis­tics Canada have dis­pro­por­tion­ately affected arts and cul­ture and deprived the sec­tor of essen­tial data for its proper assess­ment and devel­op­ment. Pri­or­ity atten­tion should be given by the gov­ern­ment to rem­edy this situation.

• Fast track the imple­men­ta­tion of a Cana­dian muse­ums strat­egy. The Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage has been labour­ing over a new fed­eral muse­ums pol­icy for a num­ber of years. This is an oppor­tu­nity to roll out the pol­icy and the fund­ing required to make it work.

• As is done in Que­bec and in a num­ber of coun­tries, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment should encour­age cre­ativ­ity by grant­ing an income tax exemp­tion on a cer­tain level of copy­right and resid­ual rights rev­enue for artists and creators.

What Can I Do?

The CCA would like to sub­mit these and other ideas to the Min­is­ter of Finance and the Stand­ing Com­mit­tees on Finance and Cana­dian Her­itage before Christ­mas. The Eco­nomic Update that the Min­is­ter of Finance will deliver this week will pro­vide an excel­lent con­text for putting for­ward ideas to not only stim­u­late the econ­omy, but also to put the arts and cul­ture sec­tor on more solid footing.

If you or your orga­ni­za­tions have ideas that could be part of the Arts Stim­u­la­tion Pack­age, please either share them with the Min­is­ter of Finance and copy the CCA, or send them for inclu­sion in the CCA brief.

When the Min­is­ter of Finance goes look­ing for ideas, the CCA and the cul­tural sec­tor don’t have to be asked twice!