As Parliament wrapped up last week, the Standing Committee on Finance released A prosperous and sustainable future for Canada: Needed federal actions, its report on the Canada-wide pre-budget consultations. A significant number of arts and cultural organizations participated in the Committee’s deliberations this year, looking to ensure that the momentum garnered from last year’s attention on arts policy (during the election) is not lost.
After the Committee navigated its way through a huge array of policy proposals and funding requests from the cultural sector, they concluded simply that ‘artistic and cultural undertakings enrich people’s lives and communities.’ They recommend that
The federal government make a significant investment in culture, for example by enhancing the Canada Feature Fund and the feature-length documentary fund, eliminating the Goods and Services Tax on books, providing a tax exemption for copyright royalties and increasing the budget for the Canada Council for the Arts.
This provides quite a shopping list for the government to choose from, with no compelling argument in place for any one significant and impactful measure. While there is no question that governments often ignore the recommendations of parliamentary pre-budget consultations, this report is so scattered and general, that it is little more than a compendium of requests. The federal government would be correct in replying that the report does not provide a clear vision, and in fact they’ve already announced measures that do provide a significant investment in culture.
Museums fared a little better in the Standing Committee’s Report, with the concluding and final recommendation stating that
Moreover, the government should work with non-national museums with a view to developing a funding strategy for their long-term sustainability.
The absence of a clear national museums policy and funding infrastructure is a longstanding issue for this part of the cultural sector.
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