Thank you.
My name is April Britski, and I'm the national director of Canadian Artists' Representation, the Front des artistes canadiens. My colleague Mario Villeneuve is our national president.
We'd like to thank you for considering our submission and hearing about them further today. CARFAC is a national association of visual artists. There are over 17,000 visual artists across Canada, approximately 4,000 of whom are our members. We saw our submission as an opportunity to invest in the economy. The arts provide real value for money, we feel.
Visual arts contribute $1 billion to the Canadian economy annually. There are numerous social benefits to the arts, and Canadians value what we do. As you probably heard earlier from the museums association, millions of Canadians attend museums on an annual basis.
At a time when the economy is struggling and job creation isn't a priority, it costs considerably less to create and sustain jobs in the arts sector compared to heavy industry. Other sectors also rely quite heavily on the arts—I'm thinking of tourism in particular, but there are others as well.
Now, providing a picture for our members, visual artists are especially financially vulnerable at this point. Visual arts are hard to monetize. There are fewer opportunities for income potential than exist for other artists, where their work is more easily duplicated; I'm thinking in particular of writing and music. The average income of a visual artist is incredibly low. It's under $14,000 a year, and the average visual artist earns less than $8,000 a year. It's not just the underachievers who have low incomes. Award-winning artists also struggle to make ends meet, and many have to take on second and third jobs and still struggle.
While what we're asking for specifically is for visual artists, all three of our recommendations would benefit all artists. Our first is to bring the budget of the Canada Council for the Arts up to $300 million annually. An increased investment for individual artist grants provides not only higher income potential for artists but also a sense of pride, accomplishment, and recognition in what they do.
Every year, projects that are recommended by juries are turned down because there is a lack of funds. In fact, most projects are turned down because of lack of funding. An increased investment to museums and galleries also allows those institutions to pay artists for the work they do in putting an exhibition together, and allows them to purchase work instead of relying almost entirely on donations of artworks to museums to build their collections, which Canadians access on a daily basis.
The other two recommendations are related to tax incentives. Tax is an area where government can have a direct impact on the income flow of self-employed artists. For the visual arts, approximately 65% of them are self-employed.
We ask that we have the ability for artists to pay tax based on their average income over a period of five years, so income averaging. For artists, income levels fluctuate widely. Most permanent, salaried workers have regular salaries so you can plan for your tax year accordingly; for artists, it can vary from year to year. Some years you may have a grant, in other years you may have a sale, but it's variable. Averaging it out over five years would really level the playing field. It would also put us on an equal level to artists in Quebec, where they do have income averaging currently, and it also exists in other countries as well.
The assignment of a zero tax rate to income from grants and awards is also something that we're looking for. The amounts that are awarded are already minimal, and any deduction can make a very big difference to an artist. It's also money that will be invested back into the artist's work, which the public enjoys. It doesn't make sense to us for the government to provide funding only to take a portion of it later on.
Thank you.