CanCult.ca

I’m having trouble following the funding shell game, but I suppose this is a good thing.

Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore announced major cultural funding renewals this afternoon, securing $504-million in arts and culture funding for the next five years.

Moore announced that the Canadian Arts and Heritage Sustainability Program, Cultural Spaces Canada Program and Arts Presentation Canada Program will all continue through 2014-2015, though re-branded with new names.

The Globe says the Conservatives are going to shower the arts with money in the new budget. A shower of gold!

On the weekend, Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore said $160-million will be designated to the sector over the next two years, and did not rule out the possibility that there could be more in store in today’s announcement. Deirdra McCracken, Moore’s communications director, confirmed that the entire $160-million would be over and above existing funding, and is not a re-announcement of any money already pledged.

Several arts executives said yesterday that such a windfall shows that the Conservatives are becoming more aware of the economic clout the sector holds, after $44.8-million in cuts to arts funding last year cost the party votes come election time. Alain Pineau, the executive director of the Canadian Conference of the Arts, said he is still concerned about the effect of cutting programs such as PromArt, but if arts and culture do indeed receive $160-million in additional funds today, “we can only rejoice.”

Someone thought they would?

Those who hoped to persuade Canada’s new heritage minister to reverse the government’s proposed cuts to arts and culture programs are going to be disappointed.

Heritage Minister James Moore says he has no plans to cancel the $45 million in cutbacks announced before the start of the federal election campaign.

“These decisions have already been made, they’re in the past,” Moore told The Canadian Press in an interview at his office in Gatineau, Que.

“But in the future, there will certainly be opportunities to examine our spending.”

A video response to Conservatives Gone Wild. Make sure you turn on the subtitles. (Some language NSFW.)

(Via Michael Geist.)

The Globe “has parsed the budgets and crunched the numbers to reveal the true trajectory of Canada’s support for the arts in recent years.”

Spokespeople for Canadian Heritage confirmed, when approached by the Globe this week, that every program cut under strategic review has come from the department’s arts-and-culture arm, leaving untouched the branches devoted to sport, youth, citizenship and identity, and diversity and multiculturalism. Such a revelation certainly hints at a targeted approach to arts cuts, which would contradict the government’s assertions that programs were axed based on simple efficiency reviews – and without ideological motivation.

“The analysis seems to point to a very worrisome trend, which is the federal government moving away from investing in arts and culture toward more societal aspects of the mandate of the Heritage Department,” says Alain Pineau, national director of the CCA. “I’m not against that – but it’s not new money. We’re taking away from Peter to feed Paul here, and that is really worrisome.”

Previously:

• Conservatives Gone Wild thread

In an exclusive interview with the Globe, Stephen Harper says he’s actually a fan of the arts, but government has to fund things people actually want. Like luge runs?

In his first detailed defence of $45-million in controversial cuts to arts and culture funding, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper called his party’s decisions good governance and said the government must walk “a fine line” between providing financial stability and “funding things that people actually don’t want.”

In an exclusive telephone interview with The Globe and Mail during a campaign stop at a winery in St-Eustache, Que., Mr. Harper, who many have called a Philistine, also spoke at length about his life-long passion for music and the piano as he denied the cuts were ideologically motivated.

He said the government should play “a fundamental role” in encouraging growth and excellence in arts and culture, but added that the marketplace, consumers and benefactors must also help shape the cultural landscape.

“You don’t get to the point where you’re just abandoning it, because I think cultural life is too fragile for that. And on the other hand, you don’t get to the point where, to be blunt, you have creators or producers who are entirely cut off from public need or public demand.”

Previously:

• Conservatives Gone Wild thread

Premier Rodney MacDonald joins Newfoundland premier Danny Williams in denouncing the Conservatives’ recent cuts to arts organizations across the country. Now we’re just waiting to hear from PEI.

Premier Rodney MacDonald is urging the prime minister to reconsider cuts to arts programs, a move widely denounced by groups in Nova Scotia last month.

MacDonald said he sent a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper saying the province is trying to emphasize the economic spinoffs of arts and culture.

“I sincerely hope that these cuts do not represent the level of importance that the government of Canada places on the value of this sector to the Canadian economy, to our provincial and our Canadian identity,” the premier said.

Previously:

• Nfld. covers arts cuts, Ottawa cuts Nfld. in retaliation

• Conservatives Gone Wild thread

I want to move to Newfoundland.

The federal government clashed with Premier Danny Williams on Friday over arts funding in what may be a sign of things to come in the next federal election.

Mr. Williams has announced that his Progressive Conservative government will cover federal funding cuts to artists in Newfoundland and Labrador by their Conservative counterparts in Ottawa.

He said he wants to protect local artists and the province’s cultural industries from $45-million in funding cuts across the country recently announced by the federal government.

Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn, the federal minister responsible for the province, accused Mr. Williams on Friday of trying to score political points that are not supported by the facts.

You’d think the Conservatives would have waited until after an election to start pissing people off….

Hundreds of people gathered in downtown Montreal on Wednesday to protest government cuts to arts and culture programs.

Artists, singers, actors, writers and politicians spoke out against some $48.5 million in funding cuts announced by the Conservative government earlier this summer.

They accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper of censoring creative production in Canada, and harming the nation’s image abroad.

The Tories’ attitude suggests they scorn culture, says Marie Tifo, a Canadian actress and Genie Award winner.

“They don’t want to recognize the existence of art in our society, and that’s appalling,” said Tifo in French. “I’m here with all my peers to say ‘no,’ we exist, and [culture] is an essential good.”

Tifo was one of several high-profile Quebec artists and politicians who attended the protest at the Société des arts technologiques, a cultural centre on St-Laurent Boulevard.

Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe accused the minority government of waging an ideological war by cutting cultural funding.

“Culture is the expression of a people, of a nation,” he said. “Attacking it, like the [Tories] are doing, shows they are ideologically short-sighted.”

Duceppe said the cuts are in line with censoring, and “that’s dangerous. We can’t allow politicians to determine what is written, what is seen, what dances are allowed, what songs are tolerable.”

The PM says the recent cuts to arts programs were necessary and that funding to the arts has increased under the Conservatives.

Harper said the government’s “changes” to more than a dozen programs is the only responsible path, and echoed recent assertions by his communications director, Kory Teneycke, and Canadian Heritage Minister Josée Verner that the government has managed to walk a tightrope, trimming the fat from its culture portfolio while simultaneously increasing overall spending.

“What this government has also done in that area, as it’s done across the government, is we’ve instituted an expenditure-management system, where over a period of five years we comprehensively review every program and we make sure that we’re spending on priorities and spending on those programs that are most effective,” said Harper. “Some programs in arts and culture have increased in funding, others have gone down – in total it’s gone up.” Federal investment in culture for the 2007-08 fiscal year was $3.4-billion, up from $3.2-billion in 2006-07.

Harper also painted promises from Liberal Heritage critic Denis Coderre to reinstate the eliminated programs, should the Liberals be elected, as irresponsible. “The opposition has a view that you can never cut any single program, ever. If that’s how they want to run the country, you’ll have two consequences. You’ll either have out-of-control spending or you will have a flat amount of program funding that is increasingly less effective over time,” he said.

Meanwhile, Karen Kain, the artistic director of the national ballet, has written Harper a letter asking him to reconsider the cuts.

“We are writing to express our deep concern about the recent cuts in budgets within the departments of Canadian Heritage and Foreign Affairs,” says a letter sent yesterday from Kain and Kevin Garland, executive director of the ballet company.

In both cases, programs that supported appearances abroad by Canadian artists are to be discontinued next March.

Their plea comes on the same day as the release of a new economic report arguing that culture is a major contributor to national wealth and prestige. The 60-page study from the Conference Board of Canada, a private-sector think-tank that did the study in collaboration with the federal government, argues that culture generated $84.6 billion in direct and indirect economic benefits last year, or 7.4 per cent of total gross domestic product.

Opposition MPs have launched a review of the recent cuts to arts funding by the Conservatives.

Opposition MPs launched a House of Commons review of nearly $45 million in cuts to arts funding on Tuesday, suggesting the way the cuts were made was an example of government censorship and abuse of power.

“They were done in secret, with no consultation, with no public review,” New Democrat MP Peggy Nash told a meeting of the Commons heritage committee.

The three opposition parties demanded the session in the wake of cuts the government quietly implemented during Parliament’s summer recess.

“There is real concern the government is picking and choosing which artists it is supporting and which artists it is not supporting,” said Nash. “I suggest, in a democracy, that is a dangerous thing.”

Previously:

• Tories slash arts funding… and then stab it a few times more for good measure
• A no-brainer indeed
• Wondering what those arts grants funded?
• Tories axe more arts programs
• “Counterintuitive and counterproductive”
• “Support for arts and culture are among the most efficient investments a government can make”
• Have the Tories written off the cultural sector?
• Tories Gone Wild: Barely funded
• What exactly are the arts good for?
• Arts funding to go to Olympics programs
• “Governments need to invest in the people and businesses that make up our cultural industries”
• “I am worried about what direction this is taking us”