Thank you very much.
I want to thank you all for coming here and accepting our submissions. I represent a provincial sectoral organization called Visual Artists Newfoundland and Labrador. It's the provincial affiliate of CARFAC, which is the national organization Canadian Artists' Representation/le Front des artistes canadiens. We have included ten recommendations in our brief, and I will highlight a couple of points from those recommendations.
Looking over the whole presentation I want to make, I would like to underline the importance of the arts in strengthening our sense of place, nation, and community. I'm speaking specifically on behalf of the visual arts in some of my recommendations, but the cultural sector as a whole would be affected by several of these recommendations.
Our motto at VANL and CARFAC is “artists working for artists”. We have a volunteer board of artists, and I'm an artist myself. I have work in the National Gallery of Canada collection, and I currently have a large exhibition touring across Canada that was funded by the touring program of the museums assistance program of Canadian Heritage. I mention that to give you some indication of the context that these national programs have on our local artists here.
Our recommendations are roughly in two sections. The first four recommendations come under taxation, and the second set comes under what you might consider social economy.
Taxation is one area where the federal government can directly impact the income flow of self-employed artists. The arts and culture sector has one of the highest rates of self-employment in the Canadian economy. As we know, traditional employment models are decreasing, and self-employment is becoming one of the largest sectors of the whole economy.
Under our recommendations for taxation, we'd like to see a tax exemption on grants to individual artists. We'd like to see a minimum exemption on revenue derived from copyright and residual payments. There are some inequities in the employment insurance program and the Canada Pension Plan that adversely affect artists. Just as a small example, people in the performing arts generally receive paycheques from the companies that employ them for rehearsal time and performance time, and those paycheques include EI deductions and Canada Pension Plan deductions.
In comparison, if you're in the visual arts you do not receive any employment cheques, and visual artists are never in a position to collect EI. In terms of the Canada Pension Plan, we have to pay both halves. So I have to pay twice as much Canada Pension Plan as someone employed in the performing arts whose employer pays their half.
We'd also like to see income averaging brought back. This is an important factor in the cultural sector, because as artists our income can vary wildly from one year to another. If we could have income averaging, again that would relieve some of those problems.
Under the second set of recommendations that I'm calling social economy and the Canadian government's investment in that, the regional organizations here in the Atlantic region and individual artists benefit greatly from the national programs that are available in the cultural sector, specifically the Canada Council for the Arts. As I mentioned, the museum assistance program helps individual artists circulate their work outside of the region. One of the main challenges here in Newfoundland and Labrador is for artists to be able to show their work outside the region.
We'd like to see a permanent funding commitment to the Canada Council for the Arts in the realm of $5 per person per capita, as well as Canadian Heritage's Tomorrow Starts Today program made permanent.
We'd like to see the cuts made to the museums assistance program reinstated.
We'd like a federal museums policy.
We'd like the completion and opening of the National Portrait Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.
We'd like an extension of the $500 children's fitness tax credit, which is given to parents who enrol their children in sports, extended to those who enrol their children in artistic activities.
Thank you.