How the arts were sidelined in this election
A funny thing happened on the way to Monday’s federal election: hardly anyone had much to say about cultural policy and funding for the arts.
The Conservative platform vaguely promised to support arts and culture, offering no details. There was no hint of an apology for devastating cuts made to the CBC, the Canadian Heritage department budget and the film industry.
Both the Liberals and the NDP have promised in their platforms to reverse the damage inflicted over the past decade by Stephen Harper’s government.
Which should mean that if Harper is ousted, we can look forward to an enlightened government that will reverse the lethal cuts made to the CBC, while increasing funds for the Canada Council and Telefilm Canada.
As well, we can only hope a new regime will restore this country’s lustre abroad by getting our embassies back to the glorious pre-Harper days when they made the rest of the world aware of Canada’s greatest artists, writers, musicians and directors.
All of that would help this country get back to where we once belonged. But I wouldn’t count on it.
A cultural reawakening in Ottawa would be much more probable if the arts had been the subject of passionate discussion during this long and exhausting campaign.
Alas, instead of focusing on cultural issues, leaders of the three contending parties limited their passionate arguments to the economy and national security.
A key issue should have been how crucial arts and culture have been to establishing Canada’s identity both at home and abroad. Instead, in the most bizarre twist of an increasingly distasteful battle for swing votes, a turning point was the question of a few women wearing niqabs.
If Justin Trudeau becomes our next prime minister, as seems likely, arts and culture leaders need to get serious, work together, and lobby effectively to push his government into making good on pledges to increase Canada Council funding to $360 million and give the CBC $150 million more a year.
We can’t take it for granted that the cultural gems that help define Canada and make Toronto a great city will continue to flourish without major government support.
One reason it’s hard to believe the Liberals will keep their cultural promises is that a lot of damaging cuts were made under their previous reign, when Jean Chrétien was prime minister and Paul Martin was finance minister, and their goal of deficit-slashing involved some pain.
According to Canadian Art’s online newsletter, there are 671,000 cultural workers in this country, and the culture sector contributes $46 billion to the GDP.
That represents 3.8 per cent of total GDP, compared to 2 per cent for the Alberta oilsands.
Shouldn’t that translate into more political clout for arts and culture?
A lot will depend on how effective the pro-arts forces are in the postelection Ottawa trenches. In recent years, one of the most effective was Joseph Rotman, who moved on from his career as business tycoon to become chair of the Canada Council in 2008.
Just months after signing on for a second term, Rotman died in January and it’s hard to think of others who could duplicate the success he had in protecting federal arts funding.
The biggest post-election question mark is the choice of the next minister of Canadian Heritage.
Liberals in this post are not always preferable to Conservative ministers. James Moore, who held the post for almost five years (from late 2008 to mid-2013) was regarded as a champion of the arts world but
The biggest post-election question mark is the choice of the next minister of Canadian Heritage
limited by the fact that he was working for Harper.
Shelly Glover, who has held the job since July 13, is not running for re-election and her exit will not be a setback for the arts world.
Among the most alarming things she did was ignoring the rules of arm’s-length by firing Stuart Murray as CEO of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg. That was done on absurdly short notice soon after the national museum opened in the fall of 2014.
From the perspective of Toronto arts players, a looming question is whether the next heritage minister will be a francophone from Quebec or someone from Ontario or British Columbia. The reason that matters is that Montreal does not like to think of itself as Canada’s secondplace cultural capital. mknelman@thestar.ca