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Viewpoint - Arts groups are not beggars
George Sipos, Gulf Island Driftwoods, Wednesday, July 20, 2011

The Canadian arts community was all abuzz in recent weeks over comments made by federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty that seemed to cast doubt on the government’s commitment to arts funding.

“We actually don’t believe in festivals and cultural institutions assuming that year after year they’ll receive government funding. They ought not to assume entitlements to grants. No organization should assume in their budgeting that every year the government of Canada is going to give them grants,” Flaherty said.

It was a cheery lead-up to Canada Day.

Except that nobody in the arts assumes anything of the sort. Each year we make a case for our need for assistance, and each year we demonstrate that we have used previous grants wisely and achieved the promised results in our communities. In this way we are no different from other industries that seek government assistance, ranging from manufacturing to health care to natural resource exploration.

My old colleague Peter Thompson, managing director of the Two Rivers Gallery in Prince George, had this response in the media about Flaherty’s comments: “The arts are not beggars. We simply expect a level playing field. The minister did not feel he had to tell the manufacturing industry or oil sands exploration that they shouldn’t expect federal government help.”

The arts, Thompson pointed out, are an industry employing over 600,000 people in Canada (more than forestry) and returning $1.38 on every dollar invested.

Interestingly, Flaherty’s comments coincided with the government’s announcement that Heritage Canada has just awarded a $500,000 grant to something called Canada’s Walk of Fame in Toronto. In the words of Globe & Mail columnist John Doyle, “This is a lame imitation of the Hollywood Walk of Fame — an invention of the
chamber of commerce there in the 1950s when movies were losing out to this new television thing.”

The first three inductees for “excellence in entertainment, sport, culture and innovation,” as Canada’s Walk of Fame would have it, are game show host Alex Trebek , pop singer Shania Twain and comedian Rich Little.

Even more interesting is a different piece of background to Flaherty’s comments:
Less than a week before his warning to arts organizations, the media reported that Toronto’s SummerWorks theatre festival, which had been accustomed to receiving $47,000 each year from Canadian Heritage to put on approximately 38 plays and other events, and which was scheduled to open this year’s festival on Aug. 4, has
just been told that its grant is completely cut.

Many observers recall that the prime minister took offence last year to the festival’s presentation of a play called Homegrown, in which the main character, a lawyer, develops sympathy for her client, a terrorism suspect.

Is it too cynical to draw the obvious lesson? Create a sidewalk to memorialize wealthy celebrities and the government will smile on you to the tune of $500,000, but take a chance on theatre that might be controversial and be prepared to fend for yourself in the wilderness.

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The writer is executive director of ArtSpring, and an author whose latest book, The Geography of Arrival: A Memoir, was shortlisted for the 2011 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction.