Madam Speaker, it is with a great deal of pleasure that I rise in the House today to speak in support of Motion No. 293 put forth by my colleague, the member from Dartmouth. It is absolutely a terrific motion and I think it has had very strong support across the country. It reads:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should celebrate and encourage Canada's magnificent and diverse culture by changing the Income Tax Act to exempt creative and interpretive artists from paying income tax on a percentage of income derived from copyright, neighbouring rights, and/or other income derived from the sale of any creative work.
I am very proud to represent a community, the riding of Vancouver East, that is home to many artists. Many people have written me or e-mailed me about this motion, and people I have met in the community have spoken to me about it. They have tremendous support for the work the member from Dartmouth has done.
I do want to say that the member, who is our culture critic in the NDP, has been a very outstanding advocate for arts and artists in this country. She works in a very quiet but very powerful way in persuading people about what needs to be done. I want to thank her for her dedication in continuing to bring forward issues that affect artists, but they are also issues in a broader public policy sense in our country.
I think this motion today is a reflection of the kind of work she undertakes to start moving the wheels of government toward recognizing some simple things that could be done to support artists right across the country.
I think there is a huge issue about lack of federal funding for the arts. We do know that every year the Canada Council for the Arts has to turn down over 75% of the applications for individual support. In fact, artists can only apply twice every four years, so we know there are big issues around lack of federal funding. In Vancouver, which generally is a city that represents a very strong arts community, there have been numerous reports through the Greater Vancouver Regional District and through the City of Vancouver that have actually exposed the lack of support given to B.C. and to Vancouver for artistic endeavours compared to other provinces.
We certainly have our share of issues and complaints about the lack of federal funding for arts and culture. I put that forward as a context that there is a larger issue we are dealing with here, and that is the cutbacks by the federal government in its support for arts and culture.
But I think the motion before us today is an opportunity to do something that will provide very tangible and real support to individual artists. It would mean that hopefully they could still access all the other programs that are available, but by saying that we would be willing to consider a part of their income tax exempt it would be a very important initiative.
I think of organizations in my riding like the Vancouver East Cultural Centre or the Video Inn or Headlines Theatre, or a very popular event that takes place in the fall called the East Side Culture Crawl, where members of the public in the thousands visit various studios in east Vancouver, talk with artists, look at their work and have a dialogue. It is an amazing event.
I think of places like Gallery Gachet or the Western Front, which is a very well known artist-run co-operative, one of the oldest in the country. I think of these venues and places in my own community where artists are able to come together to perform, to speak, to paint and to display their artistic endeavours, and where the community can also learn, understand and participate. It is something that we in east Vancouver find very empowering. It is a very important part of our community. It is very much a part of the fabric of east Vancouver.
In fact, the City of Vancouver zoned particular areas to encourage what we call artists' live/work studios, because of course one of the issues is that artists never can find affordable housing, particularly if they are doing studio work where they use industrial chemicals and paints. They need a place where they can live and work, so the City of Vancouver changed its bylaws to allow that to happen.
We are very proud that in east Vancouver we have this incredible vitality of artistic creation and endeavour. What always amazes me is that there is a very common misconception that the government is subsidizing the arts. I think it is the other way around. I think that artists are subsidizing us. If anyone ever sat down and did a proper financial accounting of the hours and years of work that artists put into their creative endeavours and the actual monetary value that artists get, it would be pennies per hour.
I think of an artist that I recently met in Vancouver, Nathaniel Geary, who just premiered his new film On the Corner at the international film festival. It is a very powerful film about the downtown east side, about the drug issues and the sex trade. It is an incredible film. It has had wonderful reviews. It is difficult for him to do the distribution for that film even though it has been critically acclaimed.
At the opening night when he spoke to the audience, who gave him an ovation for his work, he told us that it had taken him three years to write the script and then another year or two to actually do the filming, so there are four or five years of work. He did get some funding support but if he ever sat down and counted up what he put in, in a monetary sense, it would literally be pennies per hour.
That is just one example. There are tens of thousands of artists in this country who work as a labour of love on creative expression, on artistic output. Artists are not asking for a lot, which in some ways is a sad thing. They are not asking for very much. The arts community is asking that they be acknowledged for the value of their work. There is a monetary value. There is a value in terms of our society and what it represents in terms of our history and our culture.
As the member from the Tories mentioned earlier, and I agree with him, artistic expression can communicate in a much more powerful way the ideas, concepts and issues and the passion that people have about different things than we can by standing in the House and making a speech.
The motion before us today is about the principle that the value of the work produced by artists individually and collectively as a community is something we should recognize, and we should recognize it at different levels. One way to recognize the value of their work is to ensure that there is some mechanism within the income tax regime so that they can deduct some of their income from copyright and from their creative work, so that they have some benefit.
This concept is not new. It has been done in other places. The example most commonly used is Ireland, where artists are allowed to use a 100% deduction. That is not being suggested here. We are only talking about a partial deduction or a percentage of income derived from copyright, neighbouring rights or other income. We are not talking about 100%. There is a well established process that has already worked in other jurisdictions, so it is very feasible and realistic that it should be done here in Canada.
I have received quite a lot of e-mail on this issue from artists in my own riding. Kevin wrote to me and said:
This motion is not only about improving the living standards of all artists and arts institutions and nurturing the development of arts and culture in this country, but more importantly it is about the recognition and respect for the artists and arts institutions in Canada, who are presently significantly undervalued.
I would wholeheartedly agree with Kevin.
I have another e-mail that I received from Marita who wrote that if this motion were approved it would have a great effect on her life and standard of living. She wrote:
I hope that the House will see beyond the petty party lines and support this motion that not only benefits artists, but Canadian culture and forge our distinct identity.
I have another--