Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to the chair, vice-chairs, committee members and staff.
I'm Keith Martin Gordey. I'm an actor and national vice-president of ACTRA. Lisa Blanchette is our director of public affairs and communications. Thank you for inviting the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists to appear before you once again.
On behalf of ACTRA's 28,000 members who perform in English-language recorded media productions across Canada, we are pleased to share our perspective on how the Status of the Artist Act could be embraced to improve the working conditions of professional artists.
The starting point of this discussion is to understand the unique way artists work. Artists are well educated; most have specialized training in their art form and all spend years refining their craft. We are the original gig worker: self-employed, competing for work and working contract to contract.
ACTRA's agreements ensure that individual engagements are well paid. While some members have long-term contracts, the majority work intermittently. It is not uncommon to be without a paying gig for long stretches. Overall, the median annual income of Canadian actors, musicians and other performers is roughly 50% lower than for other workers.
Like other artists' organizations, ACTRA benefits from the collective bargaining rights established by the act, but the act's real potential to improve the lives of Canadian artists is found in building on its core principles, which acknowledge, one, the important role professional artists play in our society and economy; two, the unique way in which artists work; and three, the need to improve the professional and socio-economic interests of artists.
We urge the committee to consider the following three measures that would significantly benefit professional artists and strengthen our capacity to contribute to Canada.
The first and most significant measure would be to introduce a tax incentive. If the first $15,000 of annual income earned from professional artistic activity were free from federal income taxes, this would combine with the “basic personal amount” to create a powerful incentive for creativity.
The definitions necessary for such a provision are in the Income Tax Act and existing regulations. The provision would be straightforward to implement and administer. The act already contains special rules for other groups because they earn income and work in atypical ways. The income tax system should also respond to the work reality of professional artists.
Our proposed tax incentive would apply equally to all professional artists, regardless of discipline or career stage, and provide the greatest relative benefit to those with the lowest incomes, including those from Black, indigenous and other racialized communities, as well as young and emerging artists.
Restoring tax fairness for Canadian artists through income averaging would be an excellent second measure. A key feature of artists' work pattern is that their income fluctuates from year to year, in some cases substantially. Our tax system assumes a traditional employment model where earnings are stable. Performers may spend years developing their skills, attending master classes, auditioning, acting in small parts and working with their agent to market themselves before they land the principal role in a feature film. They will be well paid for that role, but it's compensation for all the time and energy they spent in the previous years and, when the film is released, it may be several more years before they land their next big role.
A 2011 ACTRA study found that when a taxpayer earned the same amount each year for four years, they would pay roughly 3% to 16% less in income tax than would an artist whose total income was the same but fluctuated year to year over the same four-year period. ACTRA urges the committee to recommend the return of Canada's four-year income averaging system to ensure fairness for Canadian artists.
As a third measure, we recommend addressing the gaps the pandemic starkly revealed in our employment insurance program. Government emergency income support measures highlighted how gig workers, including professional artists, fall outside Canada's social safety net. In fact, the current EI program is discriminatory. If a self-employed artist works at another job between gigs, they and their employer will pay into the program on the insurable hours, but if they are laid off from employment, they are ineligible to collect regular EI benefits.
EI has special rules for others. In particular, self-employed fishers, hairdressers and drivers qualify for regular benefits based on earnings rather than insurable hours. Surely, the same earning model could be adapted for artists. An EI program for a modern economy would allow self-employed workers to contribute to and collect EI despite the absence of a traditional employer-employee relationship. Artists are willing to pay into an insurance system provided they can receive benefits when they need them.
To conclude, the Status of the Artist Act remains important to Canada’s creators. It establishes a framework for improving the social and economic status of professional artists.
We hope you will embrace this opportunity, and we look forward to your questions.
