Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to begin debate on Motion No. 259, which speaks to tax fairness for the working creators of our country.
We will all recognize that the Molson's Joe Canadian phenomenon that was introduced a few weeks ago has touched a cultural nerve in the country, that people genuinely feel proud of their country. They feel proud of what we have accomplished. They feel proud about their culture and the fact that it is unique and different from others around the world.
Today we begin a debate to acknowledge those fundamental creators who make this Canadian cultural phenomenon possible. I would like to thank Joe Canadian for helping us out.
Today we recognize those who begin the creative process, those who are the pioneers, those who create something virtually out of nothing, and those who begin the process of our cultural industry, the artists themselves. In other terms we would call them the loggers and the farmers.
I want to begin my presentation today by reading a poem from a professional cowboy poet in my community of Kamloops, British Columbia. His name is Mike Puhallo. His poem is entitled Sage and Pine .
I've traveled to your cities, and for some they might be fine. But I find myself amissin' the smell of sage and pine!
Now I'm just a country poet, Not prone to fancy verse. My grammar is atrocious, My spelling's even worse!!
But my tales are plain an' honest, Like the children of the soil, The cowboys, ranchers and farmers Whose work is honest toil.
The urban crowd don't like my prose they will pick at every line my poems ain't read in fancy theatres, where they sip champagne and wine,
and I sure ain't rich or famous, But that just suits me fine, `Cause you don't need fame or fortune to smell the sage and pine.
That is a piece of work written by one of Canada's professional poets and one of Canada's official creators.
I believe it is the role of the legislator to put issues on the public agenda which will allow a healthy public discourse and hopefully add to the public's understanding of an issue. This is my hope, as we begin a debate on the tax status of Canada's creators in the year 2000, as they continue to seek fairness and consideration in our Income Tax Act.
A 1997 Price Waterhouse report done for the Department of Canadian Heritage found that an unfair level of tax is shouldered by cultural workers who are self-employed and who earn low, fluctuating incomes. According to their analysis, the Canadian who is most vulnerable under the present income tax system is the one who is an artist and self-employed.
It is my belief that culture is the heart of a nation. As a nation, Canada has developed a vibrant cultural sector with numerous cultural institutions: a diverse publishing industry, a talented music industry, a dynamic new media industry, and critically acclaimed film and television industries.
Often we fail to recognize and appreciate that without the individual artists in our country there would be no film industry. There would be no television production. There would be no book publishing or sound recording industry. There would be no theatre productions or galleries and museums. Basically, the cultural industry would collapse.
The important point which this motion attempts to point out is that we must recognize those creators. If it was in a business sense, I would say those innovators and creators who develop the R and D of industry. We cannot have a dynamic industry in our country without the researchers and developers; those people who spend time in laboratories creating that first item.
What we are saying is that we need to apply this logic now to the cultural sector to acknowledge those men and women who are often investing vast amounts of their time and energy into training and education for their professions. They actually create something from which flows the theatre productions, the film industry, the television series and so on; the downstream sector.
I would point out in this very early stage of our debate that this is a growing sector of our community. Those who read David Foot's book Boom, Bust and Echo will remember that he said the cultural sector would be one of the booming industries in our country as a result of the demographic changes occurring.
We have also recognized that our cultural sector accounts for 5 per cent to 8 per cent of the Canadian labour force, larger than agriculture, logging, forestry and mining combined. It is only second to health and social services. This is a huge industry, but this industry and all those who participate in it, either as spectators or participants, depend upon those creators who start the industrial process.
Special treatment for artists exists in other countries, notably Ireland, where income earned by artists, writers, composers and sculptors from the sale of their work is exempt from income tax altogether. There is no cap at all. Of course we all know from our readings that the cultural sector of Ireland is alive, well and dynamic as a result of a number of initiatives, including this one.
Over the years we have spent a great deal of attention giving our efforts over to political sovereignty, the development of territorial sovereignty and our economic sovereignty. Now it is time to devote that same attention, that same consideration, to cultural sovereignty. As one music composer expressed in a fax to my office the other day “Our cultural identity is barely surviving the barrage from the American cultural industries. Anything that will make it easier to be creative in Canada should be done, particularly if it comes at a reasonable cost to government”.
I want to say at the beginning that this would come at a very reasonable cost to government, based on the Irish experience, where there is no cap. If we were to put a $30,000 cap on it, it would therefore be very, very reasonable.
In 1982 Canada commissioned a study of our cultural sector called the Applebaum-Hébert report. One of its overall findings was that the largest subsidy to cultural life in Canada comes not from governments, corporations or other patrons, but from the artists themselves through their unpaid or underpaid labour.
As recently as last month renowned writer Margaret Atwood reinforced this conclusion by saying that the artist, by and large, does subsidize the rest of us. Even when the artist does make some money, others make a good deal more.
I am embarrassed to say that the average income of Canada's creators, the average income of an artist in Canada today, is about $13,000. Hon. members know that no one can make ends meet on $13,000 a year, yet that is a fact.
I have thousands of things to say in this discussion, but I want to share my time with our cultural spokesperson, the hon. member for Dartmouth. I hope that this will put the issue on the public agenda of the country and, perhaps more important from our point of view, on the political agenda of the country to ensure that we do whatever is possible as parliamentarians to ensure that our creators, those who begin the cultural process, are fairly rewarded. One of the things we can do is to consider this motion that looks to the Income Tax Act to enable those artists to exempt the first $30,000 of income from tax.