Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to stand this morning and be part of this important debate put forward by my colleague from Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys on the motion that, in the opinion of this House, the government should give consideration to exempting up to $30,000 of income tax as a gesture of support for these artists, writers and performers who work in Canada's cultural industry.
I should start by saying that I have a direct interest in this subject matter. I made my living as a playwright for 15 years before becoming a member of parliament. Many of my friends are artists, actors, playwrights, directors, painters and sculptors. Most of them cobble together a living without one whit of financial security, but also with little real choice in the matter because they are driven to create. They are driven to express themselves. They believe that they have something to say, that they can bring some clarity to murky situations, that they can make people laugh or cry or feel deeply or change their course of action, that they can make people rage at injustice, cry out for more humanity, deepen their spiritual journey and strengthen their ties to kin and community. In a word, they believe, rightly or wrongly, foolishly or not, that through their tiny contributions of creation they can have an impact, hopefully a positive one, on the human condition. For this faint hope they labour mightily in the field of culture, making on average, according to recent testimony from the chair of the Canada Council for the Arts, an income of $13,000 a year. They give up a great deal.
People who have made the choice to be creators often find they have no choice but to live in poverty. To be an artist in this country means to concentrate on creating while worrying about paying the rent. It means struggling to focus on art while dealing with overdue bills and trying to practise a craft when the basic cost of the tools is sometimes too expensive.
It means trying to keep a creative spark alive, a creative work moving ahead over a period of years while working on other jobs to pay the bills. It often means forgoing family and children. It often means disrupting marriages, families and home life since people have to travel great distances to work as artists, directors and actors.
Unlike MPs who get travel points, they cannot go home on weekends. They do all these things year in and year out. We are tremendously richer because of their sacrifices. Our nation would be far worse off without the stout-hearted band of creators who chronicle its course, tell its story, shine light in the dark corners and provide the strength to face the uncertain future.
A couple of months ago I had the great pleasure to hear His Excellency John Ralston Saul speak in Halifax on the subject of culture. Mr. Saul is one of Canada's most respected writers and philosophers. He made the point that culture is one of the three pillars which provide a nation's strength in its relation to the world. Culture, trade and security are each as important as the other.
We are absolutely nothing as a country without our creators and our culture. That is why I take every opportunity to raise issues of culture and creation in the House. I am proud to say that the NDP read poems of Canadian poets from across the country last month in recognition of national poetry month. We speak out loudly on behalf of the CBC, our public broadcaster and our premier public vehicle for giving voice to the unique important ideas from our regions. We speak out about protection for the Canadian magazine and book industry so that the creators of Canadian culture will still be able to find markets and shelf space for their creations and that Canadians will be able to feast on them.
That is why I support media concentration legislation, for the very reason that allowing concentration of the means of expression in a few private corporate hands limits the numbers of voices which can speak out.
We need a noisy, raucous, exuberant, diverse and energetic marketplace of Canadian creations. We need a nightly slot on the national news, maybe right before the NASDAQ and the other stock exchanges, informing Canadians about the number of Canadian books sold, the number of paintings created and the number of Canadians who saw a Canadian film or play that day. We need some kind of measurement that will allow us to know the number of Canadians who invested in Canadian culture that day. Even as I say that, I want it very clear that I do not see culture as a commodity that is being traded on the stock exchange.
As Margaret Atwood eloquently states, and we seem to quote her quite a bit in the New Democratic Party, culture is not a soap pad. Nor can culture be defined by beer ads, nor by press barons who live in foreign lands, nor by national sports or Peter Mansbridge. It is defined by our creators.
If we believe that our creators are important then Motion No. 259, which recognizes the importance of their contribution and gives them a limited income tax exemption, is a simple and eloquent response. It is one way of saying that we value their contributions by giving them special status within one of the most all encompassing laws in Canada, the Income Tax Act.
This is certainly not a new response to recognizing the significance of an important activity in our country. Government often uses tax changes as a means to demonstrate a concrete expression of support for a specific economic sector.
How much will this change in legislation cost Canadian taxpayers? It would be no great loss to the federal treasury since, as I have said, the average income of artists in the country is $13,000 a year. The motion is not primarily about money.
Ireland has an absolute exemption for income tax for creators. The total cost to its treasury is less than 10% of our expenditure on the Canada Council, a total of less than $14 million or less than 50 cents per Canadian. I do not think the question is one of money.
I wish to address some of the strange misconceptions about support to our artists. Not long ago I heard another member of the House, a member of the Reform Party, proclaim that she did not believe we needed any support for cultural workers because Celine Dion and Shania Twain have been so successful. She had the audacity to say that members were being patronizing to our arts community by having public policies in place that offered support. This is clearly illogical. It presumes that all art in Canada can be judged by commercial success in the international market. It suggests that people who create outside the mainstream, which means less commercial success, are somehow less creative. It says that standards for success in art is only as a commodity.
History is full of great artists who died in poverty. If we stuck by the logic of commercial success as the only way to judge art then we would close our galleries, burn down our museums, shut the theatres and concert halls, and let the mighty dollar be our new art form. This mindset dictates that we should only honour and worship that which can be bought and sold, not that which can bring joy and sadness, provoke thought and enrich our soul, not our wallet. This barren view of the world is one which I trust will be held by a small minority in this place.
Instead I hope members of the House will see the motion as an important and constructive step in attacking the obstacles thrown into the way of our creators. I hope they will see it as a small way of relieving the economic grind facing them, perhaps allowing them to work in a more concentrated way on their art, perhaps allowing them to create a book or a play in one year instead of three or four years. It will give them some small financial relief, but it will also give them one big boost symbolically in terms of their importance to the country.
I strongly support the important motion put forward by my colleague. In it we are saying as a parliament and as a nation that what creators do is special to us. They provide the mediums through which the heart and soul of this great nation are expressed. With the motion we are collectively recognizing this contribution. We are saying that we support them and that we thank them.