The First Cuts Are Not Always the Deepest: Federal Government Announces $1 Billion Reallocation of Expenditures

CCA Bul­letin 40/06

Sep­tem­ber 26, 2006

Just the Facts

On Sep­tem­ber 25, 2006, the Min­is­ter of Finance, the Hon. Jim Fla­herty, and the Pres­i­dent of the Trea­sury Board, the Hon. John Baird, announced a broad set of cuts to fed­eral gov­ern­ment expen­di­tures total­ing just over one bil­lion dol­lars. This exer­cise was pre­vi­ously announced in the May 2, 2006 fed­eral bud­get, but the details were only made pub­lic yesterday.

Under the regret­table guise of cut­ting “waste­ful pro­grams”, there appears to be two major areas where the inter­ests of the arts and cul­ture sec­tor are directly affected. These cuts are a dif­fi­cult pill to swal­low given that they were announced on the same day that the Gov­ern­ment of Canada reported a $13.2 bil­lion sur­plus (over $5 bil­lion greater than esti­mated), which will be entirely ded­i­cated to pay­ing down the debt.

The first is a reduc­tion of $4.63 mil­lion to the Muse­ums Assis­tance Pro­gram (MAP) at the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage (PCH). This pro­gram is hardly “waste­ful”, given that it pro­vides finan­cial assis­tance to regional Cana­dian muse­ums and related insti­tu­tions for activ­i­ties that facil­i­tate Cana­di­ans’ access to their her­itage, fos­ter pro­fes­sion­al­ism in muse­o­log­i­cal activ­i­ties and oper­a­tions and fos­ter the preser­va­tion, pro­tec­tion, and man­age­ment of rep­re­sen­ta­tive col­lec­tions of Abo­rig­i­nal cultures.

Another $1.105 mil­lion will be removed from “Oper­at­ing / Pro­gram Effi­cien­cies” at PCH (for which there are cur­rently no details, despite inquiries by the CCA) and a reduc­tion of some $12 mil­lion will be imposed on the Pub­lic Diplo­macy pro­gram at the Depart­ment of For­eign Affairs, which is a pro­gram that has funded aca­d­e­mics and cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions for their inter­na­tional work.

The Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA) is dis­ap­pointed at the news of yesterday’s announce­ment, as the Government’s deci­sions run counter to the views expressed in our recently-filed pre-budget sub­mis­sion, “A Cre­ative New Way of Think­ing”. Included among the CCA’s nine rec­om­men­da­tions to the Finance Com­mit­tee are the fol­low­ing:

• The CCA asks the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance to ensure that it under­stands the unique fund­ing needs of each of the PCH’s agen­cies and insti­tu­tions, and rec­om­mends to the Min­is­ter of Finance and his offi­cials that they address the crit­i­cal nature of these bud­getary challenges.
• The CCA encour­ages the Min­is­ter of Finance and the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance to address the fund­ing sit­u­a­tion of the fed­eral museum and her­itage insti­tu­tions in the upcom­ing fed­eral bud­get, as well as the urgency of the devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of a new fed­eral muse­ums policy.
• The CCA calls upon the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance to rec­om­mend plac­ing the PCH’s “Tomor­row Starts Today” suite of pro­grams on a per­ma­nent fund­ing basis and expand match­ing fund pro­grams to com­ple­ment the changes in the cap­i­tal gains tax treat­ment announced in Bud­get 2006.

Fur­ther, yesterday’s announce­ment unfor­tu­nately does not mean that the worst is nec­es­sar­ily over for the arts and cul­ture sec­tor. For instance, the Gov­ern­ment has already com­mit­ted to reduc­ing fed­eral spend­ing by the same amount once again in 2007–8. The gov­ern­ment also announced yes­ter­day that the bud­getary sur­plus for 2005-06 rang in at $13.2 bil­lion, all of which will be ded­i­cated to pay­ing down the national debt. None of the sur­plus will be used for new sup­port to pro­grams or other fed­eral ini­tia­tives, which is prob­lem­atic given the chronic nature of under-funding and a gen­eral lack of resources for our impor­tant sector.

Tell Me More.

The cuts to the Museum Assis­tance Pro­gram (MAP) are a seri­ous dis­ap­point­ment and the CCA shares the dis­may of the Cana­dian Muse­ums Asso­ci­a­tion (CMA), which has been has been actively call­ing for the devel­op­ment of a new fed­eral muse­ums pol­icy and a fund­ing strat­egy for some years. The cut fur­ther reduces the bud­get of the Muse­ums Assis­tance Pro­gram to just over $ 3 mil­lion and the CCA con­tin­ues to unequiv­o­cally sup­port the CMA in call­ing for the Gov­ern­ment to accel­er­ate the inau­gu­ra­tion of a new, much-needed muse­ums pol­icy and fund­ing pro­gram, which Min­is­ter Oda had sup­ported strongly when she was Her­itage Oppo­si­tion critic.

Other cuts may affect the cul­tural sec­tor and their real impact remains to be ascer­tained. This is the case for exam­ple with the cuts of more than $55 mil­lion to youth employ­ment pro­grams that could impact all cul­tural insti­tu­tions that rely on young work­ers dur­ing the sum­mer as many orga­ni­za­tions, from fes­ti­vals to muse­ums to gal­leries across the coun­try take advan­tage of youth employ­ment pro­grams each and every year in order to fill staff vacan­cies. This addi­tional way of sup­port­ing arts and cul­ture may very well have vanished.

Finally, the cuts to the Pub­lic Diplo­macy pro­gram at the Depart­ment of For­eign Affairs will be acutely felt by our aca­d­e­mics and cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions, which have played an increas­ingly active and valu­able role in the pro­mo­tion of Cana­dian stud­ies and cul­ture abroad. Their pres­ence on the inter­na­tional stage enhances the appre­ci­a­tion of Canada as a sophis­ti­cated and diverse soci­ety. It is the hope of the CCA that the Min­is­ter of For­eign Affairs, the Hon. Peter McKay, will soon clar­ify the Government’s posi­tion on pub­lic diplo­macy, and the place of arts and cul­ture in the broader con­text of Canada’s new inter­na­tional policy.

The expen­di­ture cuts present some inter­est­ing insights into “Canada’s new gov­ern­ment”. The announce­ment included over $90 mil­lion dol­lars of spend­ing cuts to the broadly-defined “vol­un­tary sec­tor”, includ­ing the out­right elim­i­na­tion of the Cana­dian Vol­un­teerism Ini­tia­tive, an ini­tia­tive of the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment.

These cuts are a sig­nal that the chal­lenge to vol­un­tary and civil soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions that receive fed­eral sup­port is no longer merely to advo­cate for increased fund­ing, but to present a com­pelling case about the ben­e­fits that accrue to all Cana­di­ans from their work. Yesterday’s announce­ments can also be inter­preted as a poten­tial pre-cursor to the 2007 fed­eral bud­get. The new Gov­ern­ment has clearly indi­cated that it is reduc­ing the role of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment in the lives of Cana­di­ans where they deem its role is non-essential.

The arts and cul­ture sec­tor must accept that its prin­ci­pal mis­sion for the next year is one of ratio­nal­iz­ing con­tin­ued fed­eral sup­port through a vari­ety of pro­grams and agen­cies. We can take absolutely noth­ing for granted — the clock is tick­ing. What we, as mem­bers of the arts and cul­ture sec­tor and as cit­i­zens, deem to be essen­tial and valu­able must be con­tin­u­ally and con­sis­tently com­mu­ni­cated to all fed­eral offi­cials, both elected and non-elected.

What Can I Do?

The posi­tion of the Gov­ern­ment of Canada is that the announced expen­di­ture review mea­sures are not sub­ject to appeal, as each cut was report­edly reviewed and approved by the Fed­eral Cab­i­net. The CCA nev­er­the­less encour­ages you to speak with your Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment and encour­age them to adopt a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the vital role that vol­un­tary and civil soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions play in the lives of all Cana­di­ans. You should stress the impor­tance of main­tain­ing an active part­ner­ship between the fed­eral gov­ern­ment and civil soci­ety, espe­cially the arts and cul­ture sec­tor, which is a vital com­po­nent of the democ­racy we all cher­ish as Canadians.

This is not a test – the new Gov­ern­ment is exer­cis­ing its respon­si­bil­ity in the review of all pro­grams and ser­vices of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment. It is up to us to work col­lec­tively to ensure that in so doing, they fully appre­ci­ate what is at stake for all Canadians.