The Federal Budget 2012–13 and Culture

CCA Bul­letin 06/12

March 30, 2012

Just the Facts

Bud­get day has finally arrived. The ver­dict has been handed down. Much of the eco­nomic news was eclipsed by the abo­li­tion of the penny. How­ever there was good news! The Canada Coun­cil for the Arts’ bud­get was main­tained, as Min­is­ter Moore had been sug­gest­ing for the last few weeks. Like oth­ers the CCA is thrilled with this deci­sion, which was the main rec­om­men­da­tion of our pre-budget sub­mis­sion. The gov­ern­ment is also main­tain­ing the fund­ing of Canada’s national museums.

Now for the bad news, the cuts that will affect the audio-visual sec­tor for the next three years: $115 mil­lion cut to the CBC, $10.6 mil­lion to Tele­film, and $6.7 mil­lion to the National Film Board. Other dis­ap­point­ing news: $9.6 mil­lion in cuts to Library and Archives of Canada, which doesn’t ben­e­fit from the pro­tec­tions given to other fed­eral her­itage institutions.

Finally, on the score of things we are still wait­ing to find out: what will the effect of the $46.2 mil­lion in cuts to the Her­itage depart­ment be? How much of these cuts will come from staff and how much from pro­grams, which the bud­get says will be lim­ited and will be accom­plished through “the estab­lish­ment of pri­or­i­ties for grants and con­tri­bu­tions”? Her­itage Canada should imme­di­ately adopt “a more inte­grated pol­icy frame­work that focuses on the socio-economic ben­e­fits that their pro­grams offer Cana­di­ans and their com­mu­ni­ties. The Depart­ment will also focus on fund­ing that lever­ages con­tri­bu­tions from part­ners.” We will have to wait to find out the mean­ing of this cryp­tic lan­guage in the com­ing months.

Tell Me More

The devil is in the details, and for now we don’t have many details to help us under­stand the real impacts that this bud­get will have on the arts, cul­ture and her­itage. We’ll have to wait the Main and Sup­ple­men­tary Esti­mates to see more clearly. Even still, it is only through the spe­cific deci­sions that we will begin to under­stand the government’s cul­tural pol­icy. So far we know, from Min­is­ters Moore and Fla­herty and other gov­ern­ment min­is­ters restat­ing repeat­edly, that hav­ing received fund­ing in the past is by no means a guar­an­tee that you will con­tinue to in the future.

For now, we know that on top of sav­ing our national muse­ums, the gov­ern­ment will be adding addi­tional sup­port to the Canada Trav­el­ling Exhi­bi­tions Indem­ni­fi­ca­tion Pro­gram that will help the largest muse­ums and gal­leries in the coun­try to reduce their insur­ance costs when they host major exhi­bi­tions. It must be said that fail­ing hav­ing the new museum pol­icy that all par­ties agreed on in 2005, we can cel­e­brate the fact that the bud­get has never con­tained such lauda­tory com­ments in regards to the her­itage community:

To Fol­low

Of course the CCA will con­tinue to dig into the bud­get and, we hope, will be return­ing soon with even more details and inter­pre­ta­tion of the mea­sures that will affect the cul­tural sec­tors across the coun­try, includ­ing from the point of view of char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions and the mea­sures that could affect self-employed workers.