Another Lie: Funding Cuts To The Arts
The issue of the day, brought to you by the NDP and Liberals, that’s an outright lie.
For the current fiscal year, which ends March 31, 2009, Parliament has voted to spend more than $4 billion on cultural programs, including the CBC, the Canada Arts Council, the National Gallery of Canada and the Department of Canadian Heritage. That amount is $660 million or 19.7 per cent more than was spent in fiscal 2006, the last year when the Liberals controlled the purse strings.
Overall program spending during that same period is up 18.6 per cent. In other words, Conservatives have boosted spending on arts programs faster than they have boosted overall government spending.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, for example, will receive $1.1 billion from the Tories this year, an increase of $133 million or 13.5 per cent compared to the last year under the Liberals.
Kory Teneycke, the top spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, explains:
“The public reaction out there – you’d think we’d shut down the arts. That’s not the case,” said Teneycke. “This was not about less money for the arts. It about having government programs that are meeting their objectives. We’re committed to cancelling programs that are boondoggles.”
Now that the issue has been brought to the voter’s attention, it’s about time someone looked into the funding of groups that are questionable at best – and maybe question why arts funding has increased.
September 25th, 2008 at 4:25 am
Does anyone know exactly what programs were cut? I would love to know. I read of a football field inflatable banana that was to be released over Texas or somewhere, and that it was funded by our so called arts program. Any truth in this?
Just wondering.
September 25th, 2008 at 4:28 am
ACTRA and the arts groups now do this moaning every election.
They are leveraging their taxpayer subsidized fame to agitate for lefty causes.
Make them register as a third party, like Danny Williams, or fine them for illegal election interferrence!
September 25th, 2008 at 5:17 am
Interesting how of all the things that is garnering the most protest in this election is not the economy, health care, crime but arts – something which is high above those other things in the societal hierarchy of needs.
September 25th, 2008 at 6:11 am
Alberta Girl
You know it’s because this is a CBC cafeteria issue. Journalists and actors get to bitch together while share taxpayer subsidized grub.
The solution would be to make the CBC’ers and ACTRA reps share the hospital food with doctors and nurses at any of the number of institutions a few blocks from the CBC building on University Ave in Toronto.
It might quiet them down at least just a little.
Why are they never challenged on anything by the media: their astronomical figures $85 Billion dollars net economic benefit? the fact that they spend so much of the subsitdy agitiating left leaning political causes? etc?
bob
September 25th, 2008 at 6:54 am
A goodly portion of the ficticious 85 billion generated by the arts community comes from the production of American television shows and movies carried out in Canada. If the Nutty Professor makes it a condition of funding that all Canadian television shows must be a totally Canadian operation, how long does anyone think it will take the U.S. arts industry to demand, and get, the same restrictions in their country. Of course, that will allow the whiners in this country to demand more money to cover the loss in incomes.
September 25th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Why do far-left wing artists, who produce films that most erudite Canadians repudiate, consider that they are entitled to a guarantee annual income paid for by the tax payers? Most Canadians comprehend that artists should be paid pursuant to the quality of their work, just like Joe Lunch Bucket in the factory, rather than because they are members of a socialistic sector of the economy that sucks up to left-wing politicians.
A authentic fiscal conservative Prime Minister would have instantaneously expedited very, very substantial cuts to the arts as well as most other government spending. For example, a legitimate, small-c fiscal/social conservative Prime Minister would have immediately announced the deletion of the $1 billion of useless tax dollars squandered annually on the extremely far-left bias CBC. Most Canadians would prefer to see these squandered tax dollars materialize in their personal bank accounts.
In an age of numerous Canadian television and radio networks, satellite networks, and of course the internet, there is no longer any requisite for a government-owned, and tax payers paid for, TV and/or radio network; especially one ran by left-wing affirmative action bimbos and watched/ listened to mostly by the far-left, but paid for my people who actually work for a living and pay taxes.
Unfortunately Canada does not have a legitimate fiscal and/or social small-c conservative Prime Minister who would expedite a non-socialist agenda that would diminish our excessive tax bill.
A truly genuine small-c conservative would recognize that taxpayers, rather than bureaucrats, are more proficient at spending their own money. Regrettably after this election, genuine small-c fiscal and/or social conservatives will still not be represented in the House of Commons.