The Status of Status

Garry Neil

Feb­ru­ary 2007

Sta­tus of the Artist is a term describ­ing a cat­e­gory of leg­is­la­tion and pro­grams intended to

improve the cir­cum­stances of pro­fes­sional artists.  Since the approval of the 1980 UNESCO

Rec­om­men­da­tion con­cern­ing the Sta­tus of the Artist, there have been efforts in several

Cana­dian juris­dic­tions to imple­ment such policies.

 

While Cana­dian stud­ies in the 1980s rec­om­mended gov­ern­ment actions on a range of policy

issues, includ­ing income tax, health and safety, copy­right, insur­ance, pen­sions, social

ben­e­fits and oth­ers, early ini­tia­tives in Canada dealt pri­mar­ily with col­lec­tive bargaining.

Because most artists are self-employed, col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing between artists’ associations

and cul­tural pro­duc­ers gen­er­ally fell out­side labour laws.  Fed­eral leg­is­la­tion and Québec

laws pro­vide an equiv­a­lent statu­tory basis for col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing efforts on behalf of artists.

 

As legal jurispru­dence has devel­oped over the past fif­teen years, the col­lec­tive bargaining

issues out­side Québec have become more com­plex.  This is the case because cer­tain artists

are now con­sid­ered to be employ­ees for income tax and other pur­poses, and these and other

cat­e­gories of artists increas­ingly fall under provin­cial labour laws.  Québec was the first juris­dic­tion in Canada to develop mea­sures specif­i­cally focused on  improv­ing the social and eco­nomic sta­tus of pro­fes­sional artists.  Since its ini­tial leg­is­la­tion was adopted in 1987, it has intro­duced and con­tin­u­ally improved a wide range of mea­sures.  Québec is con­sid­ered a world-leader in the field, with mea­sures such as mak­ing cer­tain copy­right roy­al­ties tax free, annu­ity pro­vi­sions allow­ing artis­tic income to be spread over sev­eral years, and spe­cific mea­sures relat­ing to artists’ health and safety.

 

Fed­eral leg­is­la­tion was adopted in 1992 and the Act was reviewed in 2002.  The operative

pro­vi­sions of the leg­is­la­tion estab­lish the Cana­dian Artists and Pro­duc­ers Professional

Rela­tions Tri­bunal to over­see col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing on behalf of artists work­ing in federal

juris­dic­tion.  No action has been taken on the rec­om­men­da­tions aris­ing from the 2002 review

or a num­ber of other stud­ies the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage com­mis­sioned in 2004.

In the 1990s, actively encour­aged by the pub­li­ca­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of a Canadian

Con­fer­ence of the Arts roadmap for provin­cial action, com­mit­tees were formed and studies

under­taken in British Colum­bia, Saskatchewan, Man­i­toba, Ontario, Nova Sco­tia and

New­found­land and Labrador.

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In 2002, Saskatchewan adopted leg­is­la­tion which iden­ti­fied equity for artists in the workforce

as a key issue.  Over the past five years, there have been exten­sive com­mu­nity consultations

and other work to develop prac­ti­cal mea­sures to improve the sit­u­a­tion for artists, but few new

mea­sures have been announced.  After receiv­ing the final report of a sta­tus of the artist

com­mit­tee, the gov­ern­ment tabled amend­ments to its law in Octo­ber 2006, all of which

address issues of indi­vid­ual con­tracts and bargaining.

 

Fol­low­ing its elec­tion in 2003, the Ontario gov­ern­ment appointed an advi­sory com­mit­tee on

arts and cul­ture, which formed a sub­com­mit­tee on the sta­tus of the artist.  After extensive

con­sul­ta­tions, the sub­com­mit­tee reported in Decem­ber 2006 and rec­om­mended a range of

actions.  The gov­ern­ment tabled leg­is­la­tion in April 2007.  Actions to date and the mea­sures 3

con­tained in the draft leg­is­la­tion are, at best, mod­est and do not deal with collective

bar­gain­ing issues, income tax or social benefits.

 

With respect to issues other than col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing, there is a broad con­sen­sus among

artists and their asso­ci­a­tions that mea­sures are needed urgently to improve the sit­u­a­tion of

pro­fes­sional artists in Canada. While there is a gen­eral con­sen­sus in the com­mu­nity that col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing can improve  sub­stan­tially the eco­nomic sit­u­a­tion of pro­fes­sional artists, there is con­sid­er­able diver­gence  of views among artists and their orga­ni­za­tions about what mea­sures should be taken, and in

what cul­tural sec­tors, to encour­age and sup­port col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing efforts.

 

This report offers a com­pre­hen­sive overview of sta­tus of the artist mea­sures by provin­cial gov­ern­ments in Canada. It also pro­vides back­ground on sta­tus of the artist pol­icy issues and reviews the lat­est devel­op­ments at the fed­eral level.

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