Good morning. My name is Lucy White. I'm the executive director of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres. Thank you for inviting PACT to speak to you today.
We represent 140 professional not-for-profit and for-profit companies located across the country and working in numerous theatrical traditions from many cultures and languages. Although our membership is widely diverse, we share the belief that the arts have intrinsic value to Canadian citizens and our society. We share this belief in the value of the arts to Canadians with the Minister of Finance, who said in January that, “Day to day, Canadians experience the essence of this rich and diverse country through the imagery and worlds of its artists.”
In PACT's brief to this committee, which you have all seen, we made three recommendations. In the interest of time, I'll be focusing only on the first two.
First, PACT recommends that the government increase the base budget of the Canada Council for the Arts by $120 million over three years. Second, we recommend that the government invest in a $25 million market access and innovation program to help Canadian cultural products reach domestic and global marketplaces.
As the basis of Canada's economy shifts towards a knowledge-based foundation, the economy of tomorrow, all fields of endeavour that, like the arts, can tap into imagination, creativity, and innovation, will--again like the arts--generate a high return on investment and create prosperity for Canadians. For example, the federal government invests $3.4 billion in arts and culture annually. In return, 609,000 jobs are created, $5 billion in cultural exports are generated, and $25 billion in tax revenues are returned to all levels of government.
In the last decade, the arts and culture workforce grew by 31%, as compared to 20% for the workforce overall. In short, the arts and culture sector is a significant economic sector that is poised to contribute to Canada's economic recovery across the country.
Government has wisely invested in the development and production of arts through its arm's-length agency, the Canada Council for the Arts, and in 2007 bolstered its support for the council by adding $30 million to the base budget. That was the first and very welcome significant increase for the Canada Council in many years.
Increasing the base budget of the council will ensure access to the arts for all Canadians. It will allow the council to support newer, younger, and more diverse arts organizations, especially those located in smaller cities and communities across the country, and to address demand for an increasingly diverse range of artistic works. It will allow arts organizations to minimize the impact of inflation on pricing and maintain affordable access for all Canadians. Such an increase now to the council's base budget would raise the curtain on a new era of sustainable growth essential to the creative economy.
Our second recommendation is that the government invest in a $25 million access and innovation program. While the growth in arts organizations across the country has been extraordinary, many rural and remote communities don't have local theatre, dance, or music companies and must rely on touring companies to visit. In 2007 alone, Canadian theatres on tour played to more than one million audience members worldwide. Canadian arts organizations are committed to providing Canadian arts experience and engaging Canadian audiences, no matter where they reside, from Gaspé to fly-in communities in the Yukon. A new market access and innovation fund would invest in small and medium-sized organizations to help them penetrate existing domestic markets more fully and to explore and expand into new markets across the country.
Worldwide, Canadian art is in great demand, and the opportunity to showcase Canadian talent opens up foreign markets to sales of Canadian arts and cultural products and bolsters Canada's profile across the globe. Increasing the export of cultural products will also boost tourism in Canada by providing the foreign tourist market with exciting reasons to visit Canada.
Recently the government has been focused on short-term funding to stimulate the economy, and the arts and culture sector has benefited from stimulus spending, for which we are thankful. As government turns its attention to economic recovery, the arts and culture sector asks to be recognized as an economic sector poised to contribute to deficit reduction and economic recovery. As my colleague said, a permanent new investment of $145 million in the arts, which is about one-twentieth of 1% of federal spending, would generate a significant and sustained return on investment for Canadians.
I want to close by reading to you two statements. In 2006 this committee made the following recommendation to government: “That the federal government increase funds allocated to the arts and cultural sector. In particular...funding for the Canada Council for the Arts should reach $300 million over two years.” In June 2009, Parliament agreed, saying that “In the opinion of the House, the government should give direct assistance to artists by increasing the annual budget of the Canada Council for the Arts to $300 million.”
The performing arts are a collaborative practice, and it is in this spirit of collaboration that we ask government to respect the will of Parliament and respond in the upcoming budget to the specific recommendations made by the arts community and by you and your colleagues.
Thank you.