The Bruce Report

In what must be the most comprehensive analysis in recent years of culture’s impact on the national economy, the Conference Board of Canada – no bastion of latte-swilling, granola-crunching lefties – concludes, among other things, that “an important challenge for governments is to ensure communities have the means necessary to support creativity and diversity.”

 

Ahem, Mr. Harper, are you listening?

 

It is one of those exquisite ironies that the report, just released to the public, was partially funded by the Department of Canadian Heritage which, if the Prime Minister makes good on his recent threats, faces deep and abiding cuts to its programming.

 

But what’s even richer is that the 72-page study, entitled “Valuing Culture: Measuring and Understanding Canada’s Creative Economy” seems to repudiate, without actually being explicit about, the Conservative government’s entire approach to the arts.

 

What, I wonder, does Team Harper make of the following observation? “The real value-added output by culture sector industries totalled $46 billion in 2007,” the Board says. “Our estimate, taking into account direct, indirect, and induced contributions, is that the economic footprint of the culture sector was approximately $84.6 billion in 2007, or 7.4 per cent of Canada’s total real GDP, and that [it] contributed 1.1 million jobs.”

 

Or this assertion: “While the culture sector constitutes a distinct sphere of economic activity in its own right, generating substantial wealth domestically and through international trade and investment, it also plays a much more expansive role in Canada’s social, cultural, and economic well-being.”

 

Or this conclusion: “Increasingly, countries around the world, as well as cities and regions, are recognizing the pervasive role that a dynamic culture sector plays as a magnet for talent, an enhancer of economic performance, and a catalyst for prosperity.”

 

In fact, we may never know just how dutifully the Tories’ public relations professionals – spinning like so many Cirque du Soleil contortionists – are working to “key message” the government’s way out of this minor, if momentarily embarrassing, mess. But, we do have a couple of clues.

 

When asked about his decision, in the wake of the report’s release, to cut as much as $44 million in arts and culture funding, Harper had this to say: “We’ve instituted an expenditure management system, where over a period of five years we comprehensively review every program and we make sure that we’re spending on priorities and spending on those programs that are most effective. Some programs in arts and culture have increased in funding, others have gone down.”

 

It’s not exactly a rousing, or convincing, defence. While it is true that overall federal spending on the sector has risen over the past two years (to $3.4 billion in 2007-08, from $3.2 billion in 2006-07), much of these funds have been merely earmarked, and not actually distributed.

 

Moreover, there’s been a not-so-subtle shift, over the past 24 months, in the government’s definition of what constitutes a legitimate cultural enterprise. Large, tourist-drawing extravaganzas extolling the virtues of the Canadian mosaic deserve funding. Small, indie-manufactured films with explicit sexual content and dirty words in their titles do not.

 

What’s rash and alarming about the current round of cutbacks is not so much the money involved (though $44 million isn’t chump change, by anyone’s measure); it’s that they are targeted to injure the little producers and artists who, quite frankly, can’t be controlled by Big Brother in any other way.

 

But, as the Conference Board’s report so beautifully demonstrates, creativity – the wellspring of economic productivity and prosperity – comes from individuals, not institutions or governments. Canada’s cultural sector is dominated by small-timers struggling to put on a show, write a book, paint a picture, sculpt a bust, sing a song. We may not always like what they do; but that they do it enriches every one of us.

And that’s the challenge governments must face in an open, diverse society.

Again, Mr. Harper, are you listening?

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.