I wasn’t too upset that the Conservatives unilaterally made $40 million in cuts to arts and cultural programs this past month, without parliamentary approval (they didn’t technically need it). While the cuts themselves devastate some programs, they do represent a drop in the bucket of the government’s overall arts and culture budget, and there was every chance that they could reinvest the money elsewhere in the sector.
However, the cuts themselves were a worrying symbol, a suggestion that Harper was playing to his base and punishing artists basically for being artists. It didn’t help dispel the fears of a Harper hidden agenda, leaving people to wonder what cuts would follow should Harper get his majority government. It’s not the cuts themselves, it’s the signals that Harper is sending that he is not serious about pursuing a centrist agenda.
But recently, in responding to criticism over these cuts to arts and culture, the disciplined facade of Stephen Harper slipped somewhat, and he displayed a refreshing bout of candour. He said:
You know, I think when ordinary working people come home, turn on the tv and see a gala of a bunch of people, you know, at a rich gala, all subsidized by the taxpayers, claiming their subsidies aren’t high enough when they know the subsidies have actually gone up, I’m not sure that’s something that resonates with ordinary people. Ordinary people understand we have to live within a budget. We have increased culture. We haven’t increased anybody’s budget without limit, so we’re not going to do this. I think this is a niche issue for some, but that’s my view…
A “rich gala”. Did I misplace my invitation while I was changing the Life brand diapers on my daughter Nora? Exactly who is at that rich gala, do you think? Who are these mythological rich artists complaining about the subsidies that they themselves receive, huh? Margaret Atwood? Stephen Page and the Bare Naked Ladies? Douglas Copeland and the creators behind jPod?
Well, I guarantee you that any subsidy that these artists above receive here and now is a small fraction of the income that they receive each year thanks to their hard work. These individuals pay far more into the country than they’ve taken, in the form of their taxes if nothing else. These are not the parasites that Stephen Harper would have you believe.
As for the rest of us artists that these subsidies do pay, who struggle to make ends meet, we give back to their country as well. We are the artists who have helped rescue whole neighbourhoods from poverty, from Parkdale in Toronto to Alberta Avenue in Edmonton and beyond. We are the people who have helped foster the economic wellbeing of their communities (1.1 million jobs and $85-billion annually, according to the Conference Board of Canada) through added tourism, through increased business investment, from the Stratford Festival’s contribution to diverse economy of its host city to the Jazz and Comedy Festivals of Montreal. Harper would have Canadians believe that they receive no benefit from these individuals who have worked their fingers to the bone, often for less than $23,000 in total annual income? Shame!
And it’s not about accountability, either. You’d be amazed at the amount of paperwork one has to go through to apply for these grants. The process is at least as carefully vetted as a number of other programs the Conservative government operates, without these sorts of questions, giving grants to support small business. To suggest otherwise is a lie.
But perhaps the saddest part of Stephen Harper’s comment is the phrase “ordinary working people”. As if ordinary working people can’t appreciate Shakespeare or a painting by the Group of Seven. As though Atwood’s Oryx and Crake was not a bestseller, or the works of Kenneth Oppel. Harper sells Canadians short, because in my experience, ordinary Canadians are really quite extraordinary people. They turn out in droves to the Eden Mills Writers Festival and Word on the Street to hear their favourite authors speak. They’ve turned the Stratford Festival into a profitable success. Millions visit the Art Gallery of Ontario and the national museums in Ottawa. These ordinary Canadians respect authors and they respect artists. I’m confident they don’t buy Harper’s suggestion that the ordinary Canadians who are artists are out of touch from the ordinary Canadians who aren’t.
A Tory reader recently e-mailed me, noting the fact that I’d called myself a Red Tory in the past, and asking whether I thought that there was a place in the Conservative Party for me. At present, I have to say, not while Stephen Harper is leader. I realize that some of the more partisan Tories may dismiss this rant as coming from an individual who was never a friend to the Conservative Party; that’s not true (if I were a kilometre north, I’d have happily voted for Elizabeth Witmer), but ultimately that’s a delusion they’ll just have to live with.
Yes, Harper has tried to move to the centre on some policies, but I simply hate the fact that he responds to criticism and dissent in the most cynical, partisan way. You saw this angry face of Mr. Harper during the Linda Keen affair, and you see it now. At the core, Stephen Harper has expressed contempt for me personally, and my friends, based on the profession we’ve chosen to pursue. Never mind that I haven’t received a government grant all year; according to him, I’m still out of touch from the people he sees as defining ordinary Canada.
There’s no way I can ever vote for that, and I don’t see how anybody can think I can do anything different.
Ontario Oil: Did You Know We’re Still Pumping?
Did you know that Ontario is where the North American petroleum industry began 150 years ago? Did you know that we’re still pumping? While our output is miniscule compared to Alberta, there’s still over a hundred million dollars of business being conducted, and there’s still exploration going on (in and around the Lake Erie shore).
That was among my findings as I researched this article which has appeared in the most recent edition of Business Edge. One thing I love about journalism is how much I get to learn in writing it.
September 25, 2008 11:23 PM
You are not alone, many former red Tories - George Grant style red Tories - no longer vote for the conservatives. Hasn’t David Orchard moved over to the Liberals? What about all those “Red Tories” in Eastern Canada who feel betrayed by Peter MacKay and are actively supporting the ABC? Isn’t this why the number of votes for the CPC don’t equal the combined Reform / PC numbers? About the grants to culture, if you look closely at what the CPC are cutting you’ll notice that it is grants for culture that the religious right want censored that are being scrapped. In my opinion Harper is playing to his base.
September 26, 2008 9:09 AM
Spot on about Harper and this incarnation of “conservatives” (I refuse to call them Tories because they are not and I don’t really think they are “conservatives except int eh backward social sense).
Eric is quite right about the religious and ideological targets of these cuts - from SWC, to the Court Challenges Programme and now this. It has “Dr.” Charles McVety’s clammy fingerprints all over it.
As for the “Ontario Oil”, I grew up, from age 7 until I went to University, in Petrolia Ontario. I used to be able to watch the still-working oil wells pumping in the field behind my Grandparents house on the edge of town - fields that belonged to Mackenzie Oil, originally owned and run by Alexander Mackenzie (yes, THAT Alexander Mackenzie) and now by his descendants.
Most folks don’t even realize that the HQ of Imperial Oil was Petrolia until WW2, when it moved to Sarnia. It was Toronto and then Calgary on in the last 20 years or so.
And yes, our hockey teams are called the Hard Oilers.
September 26, 2008 10:19 AM
If Harper feels comfortable playing to his base with these cuts, that’s a scary look at the future. If they get a majority, these will seem like a paper cut, compared to the amputation to come.
September 26, 2008 11:24 AM
Ontario Oil: I’ve never heard of any oil rig explorations in Hudson’s Bay! There’s oil offshore north of Alaska, the city of Los Angeles, throughout the Gulf Coast, along the east seaboard… and for 150 years strong, in Oil County, Ontario. We - shared with Quebec, Manitoba, and Nunavut are possibly sitting on Trillions of [below the Arctic circle & ozone danger zone] Revenue Dollars. With a million dollars, I’d buy property in Fort Severn:)
September 26, 2008 4:27 PM
Well, it seems people are going to read what they want to into Harper’s comments.
If no one bothered to look, overall funding for the arts went up, not down - and cuts that were made were a result of a departmental review, not some ideological witchhunt.
Is Harper playing to his “base”? Yes - in the sense that for a truck driver or a driller or someone who works in retail, and lives on a mediocre wage, probably wonders why people who happen to be in “the arts” are entitled to subsidies that most of the rest of us are not. Harper was making one simple point: yes, the arts are important, but that doesn’t mean they’re above the same budgetary considerations that everything else the government funds is. And his reference to “rich galas” is not to everyone who receives funding. It’s to the self-appointed figureheads for “the arts lobby”, who speak as if art is completely a creation and responsibility of government. You know the drill: failing to subsidize something is “attacking” it, in much the same way that failing to pay for free space in a newspaper must be squelching free speech.
My guess was that Harper simply lost his temper. I probably would too if I was being pilloried day after day for $40 million in cuts out of a $3 billion dollar budget, and being loudly smeared by artists coast to coast who speak as if they are entitled as of right to subsidies simply by declaring themselves artists.
James, I don’t see how Harper’s treatment of the arts isn’t centrist, unless to be centrist means you never reduce spending anywhere by any amount. I understand why some people feel slighted about the rich gala comment. It’s too bad that is overshadowing the rest of his comments, which are all perfectly reasonable.
September 26, 2008 5:13 PM
Well, as I said at the top of this post, the cuts are a small percentage of overall government arts funding, and I did not initially share the view that others have expressed that this represents a widespread attack on the arts. I was just upset by the wording Harper used to defend those, which certainly calls to mind a divide and conquer strategy — that artists are not ordinary Canadians. Losing temper or not, I resent that attitude and approach. This sort of talk affects me personally, so of course I’m sensitive to it.
But regarding the idea that the cuts were just a departmental review, Flaherty himself says that the cuts were “political”. See here:
So, the decision to keep or reject these programs was made on a political basis — a statement of whether or not the Conservatives valued these particular programs or not. That certainly opens up an argument on policy. Some of these programs were akin to loans to small businesses — they returned on their investment. But the Conservatives didn’t like them because of who they were helping, even if their assessment of what was going on was inaccurate:
Gwynne replied:
February 6, 2009 10:27 PM
40 million is a drop in the ocean compared to some government expenditure. What they don’t apprecaite is the contribution of the arts to the social fabric and sense of national pride.