Artists and students meet outside ACAD to call for stronger supports for Canadian arts and culture

Are Canadian artists different from “ordinary working people”?

At a recent campaign stop in Saskatoon, Conservative leader Stephen Harper drew a line between the two, suggesting “ordinary working people” couldn’t relate when they turned on the TV and saw artists “at a rich gala all subsidized by taxpayers, claiming their subsidies aren’t high enough when they know those subsidies have actually gone up.” Harper also described public outrage over his government’s arts cuts as a “niche issue.” (The Conservative government has cut $45 million in arts and culture programs.)

Artists in Calgary are stupefied by the suggestion they attend “rich galas” while other Canadians watch TV. “A lot of us are not well off, and we’re not going to publicly funded televised galas every evening,” says Zoe Schneiter, a sculpture student at the Alberta College of Art & Design (ACAD). Schneiter was one of more than 50 people who showed up outside ACAD September 30 to loudly protest Harper’s arts cuts. “A lot of artists in Canada are just striving to get by, and it’s the norm to have to have a second job or a full-time job — and then art as your hobby,” she says. “Which shouldn’t be.”

Fred Stenson, one of Western Canada’s most accomplished novelists, says Harper has it wrong: galas are for businesspeople, not artists. “The rare, rare time that I get to go to a gala, it’s usually a fundraiser,” says Stenson, who can only remember wearing a tuxedo once in his life. “I usually get a free meal, and I’m there so that businesspeople can meet an artist and hopefully that will help make them want to… donate some money to, say, Alberta Theatre Projects.”

Stenson wasn’t at the ACAD rally, but he carries the same concerns and believes Harper is making a “carefully calculated” attempt to win votes by cancelling arts programs. “It’s disgraceful, because he’s driving a wedge between artists and everybody else in the society,” Stenson says. “And he’s doing it very, very deliberately.”

The Calgary Professional Arts Alliance (CPAA) — which represents nearly every arts group in the city, from Stride Gallery to the Calgary Folk Music Festival — also responded with disbelief at Harper’s portrayal of Canadian artists. “I think it showed a little bit of a misunderstanding of just what the arts community is all about,” says the CPAA’s Dale Turri. “…We all certainly consider ourselves ordinary working Canadians, just like anybody else.”

The NDP arranged the ACAD rally, and all three Calgary NDP candidates that were present emphasized that arts funding isn’t a niche issue, but one that affects all Canadians. “I think that considering it a niche issue just shows how Harper can’t be trusted with Canada,” says Calgary West candidate Teale Phelps Bondaroff. Vinay Dey, who’s running in Calgary Northeast, says Harper is being short-sighted. “Every art function, when it happens, creates revenue for the community, for the city, for the province, for Canada,” says Dey.

Fourteen programs are being downsized or eliminated as part of the Canadian government’s “strategic review” of arts programs. In an e-mail, a spokesperson from Canadian Heritage said the review was done to “assess a number of programs as a group to ensure that they attain strong results and remain relevant.”

Some cancelled programs, like Trade Routes, helped Canadian artists get access to international markets. Others, like the Canada Memory Fund, paid for the digitization of Canadian heritage collections and archives. “[Harper] has closed a program that democratized the archives and museums of Canada so that it wasn’t just the private fiefdom of people within the Ottawa region,” says Stenson, who regularly uses online archives while researching his books. Stenson finds it ironic that Harper is now trying to portray artists as elitists. “The most elitist act done in the last few months is to cancel the digitization process — which prevents those institutions from being accessible to ordinary Canadians,” he says.

All of the major parties are making arts promises. The Conservatives recently announced a Children’s Arts Tax Credit that would cover music lessons and art and drama classes for children. The Liberals have said they will double funding to the Canada Council for the Arts if they’re elected. The Green Party says it will also increase arts funding and give arts groups supports similar to those routinely given to other sectors like the automobile industry and the oilpatch.

The NDP says it will introduce an annual federal tax exemption of $20,000 for income earned from copyright and residuals. Blake Senini, a sculpture professor at ACAD, says he’s impressed by that proposal. “That would help a young artist survive — literally,” says Senini. “At least it allows them the ability to have dignity as an artist. At least [NDP leader Jack Layton] is putting attention on it instead of cutting it.”

Senini has less flattering things to say of Harper and the Conservatives. “I think they just function in a different circle. Artists, to them, are kind of necessary, but not somebody you’d invite over to your house.” He adds quickly: “But a banker would be in the front door.”