lordmandeep
Banned
the only sane and proper answer to that is for the good of society.
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- Thread starter unimaginative2
- Start date
the only sane and proper answer to that is for the good of society.
adma
Superstar
But the latter are hotties. Just proves then Tories are Tom Of Finland types
H
Hydrogen
Guest
the only sane and proper answer to that is for the good of society.
As a proposition for investment, can you prove this? We do these things because we believe in the value of them, not because they will automatically turn out to be a good monetary investment.
Before you roll your eyes, have you actually followed the thread of this debate? I have my doubts.
lordmandeep
Banned
Well, I think looking at the world, a well educated society is a benefit and the more the better.
Transit is of no use to over 50-60% of the people in the GTA, thus it is ineffective for people who live in the suburbs to pay for it.
Highways and wide Roads are no use to people who do not have a car, why are my tax dollars being use to build 6 lane roads in the suburbs.
Look there has been a call to break down taxes based on the services you use, but imo the city can barley handle things now. The Bureaucracy needed to create and maintain such a system would imo mean the same amount of taxes.
Imo we should stop fragmenting ourselves into silly groups, because building good schools, roads and transit is better for all of us.
So, what you are thinking is something that is extremely radically to the right.
afransen
Senior Member
I get the impression that he is making a rhetorical point about the appropriateness of arts funding by drawing parallels with library funding.
syn
Senior Member
It's sad there are still so many people who find it hard to understand why funding the arts and artistic endeavors are important.
PukeGreen
Active Member
I'm struggling to determine if people in this thread actually believe that our tax dollars should not be used to educate our population, or if they're just being trollish to make some obscure point.
An educated population attracts advanced industries to an area; advanced industries offer good high-paying stable jobs to that population; people with good high-paying stable jobs pay more income taxes and spend more money in the their communities, hence raising living standards for everyone around them. Others who are educated and successful are attracted to the area, helping it grow and prosper further. Repeat.
A poorly educated population causes high-paying industries to abandon an area for greener pastures; areas with few quality jobs have populations that are economically poor and who feel marginalized; the poor and marginalized turn to gangs and crime to survive, further worsening the quality of life for those around them; those who can afford to leave do so, and only those who have no choice stay. Repeat.
Please choose the scenario you would prefer for your neighbourhood.
An educated population attracts advanced industries to an area; advanced industries offer good high-paying stable jobs to that population; people with good high-paying stable jobs pay more income taxes and spend more money in the their communities, hence raising living standards for everyone around them. Others who are educated and successful are attracted to the area, helping it grow and prosper further. Repeat.
A poorly educated population causes high-paying industries to abandon an area for greener pastures; areas with few quality jobs have populations that are economically poor and who feel marginalized; the poor and marginalized turn to gangs and crime to survive, further worsening the quality of life for those around them; those who can afford to leave do so, and only those who have no choice stay. Repeat.
Please choose the scenario you would prefer for your neighbourhood.
H
Hydrogen
Guest
It would have been worthwhile had you actually read the thread with some more depth. You might check afransen's post to actually see what you have missed (completely).
unimaginative2
Senior Member
This is a pretty clever take on the issue. Helps if you're bilingual.
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=tFbbwEtrsa8
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=tFbbwEtrsa8
afransen
Senior Member
Yes, that was quite clever.
kEiThZ
Superstar
Interesting context...I didnt know what the money was re-directed to...
PUBLICATION: Calgary Herald
DATE: 2008.09.25
EDITION: Final
SECTION: The Editorial Page
PAGE: A18
KEYWORDS: ELECTIONS; POLITICAL PARTIES; POLITICIANS; PRIME MINISTERS;CANADA
SOURCE: Calgary Herald
WORD COUNT: 588
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Much ado about arts funding
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Canadian soldiers risk death daily on Afghanistan's high and dusty plain, the Russians are staking out the Arctic, Canada is on the brink of ecological ruin -- if you believe the Green party -- and economically speaking, the sky, for once, may truly be falling.
Yet on Tuesday, Canadians were asked to feel the pain of Quebec's artists, who complain the Philistines-R-Us Conservative government has an agenda to "kill culture."
In French, the last e in "merde" is silent. Not so the opposition. "Grabbing hold of the aorta and putting the squeeze" on Quebec culture, was how NDP Leader Jack Layton put it. Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, barely more temperate, called the results of the government's strategic review, announced in the supplementary estimates to this spring's budget, an ideological broadside on artists and on freedom of expression.
First of all, it's no assault on free speech. Cutting a grant is not the same as an early morning call from the KGB.
More to the point, these over-the-top claims are substantiated neither by the amount of money involved -- $45 million of Heritage Canada's expanded budget has been reallocated -- nor the anatomical hyperbole unleashed.
What, one wonders, might the Conservatives have done? Surely, Canada's artistic soul must lay prostrate and bleeding at their jackbooted feet?
In the words of the late Quebec premier Rene Levesque, everybody should take a valium.
The Canada Council, funder of operas, orchestras and fungal performance art, is intact. So is its $182 million federal stipend, up $30 million on the Tory watch. The Tories have also upped the Canadian Television Fund $20 million, to $120 million, and that publicly funded purveyor of centre-left visuals, the National Film Board, is up $7 million, to $53 million, with another $325 million in NFB tax credits available.
And so on. Altogether, Canada's arts and culture funding has risen from $2.1 billion in fiscal 2005-06, to $2.3 billion in '08-09 -- the eight per cent increase Harper is talking about.
What the opposition is incorrectly calling "cuts," is the termination of some programs presented by staff to the heritage minister as obsolete, or having achieved their intended purpose. These have indeed been axed (see the list below).
Among the programs to be wound up are the Canadian Memory Fund, the Culture.ca web portal, the Canadian Cultural Observatory and the Canadian Arts and Heritage Sustainability Program that listed among its functions "assistance to reduce deficits and build working capital reserves."
The money thereby saved has been redirected to other cultural purposes.
Part of the furor is not everybody sees some of the new initiatives, such as supporting linguistic duality, or promoting French at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games, as truly cultural.
Reasonable people can disagree about that, but frankly, we're not seeing much reason in Montreal at the moment.
Quebec generally has done quite well from Conservative promises, with $2 million for jazz and humour festivals in Montreal, another $550,000 for the 2008 Quebec City Summer Festival and a robust $40 million for Montreal's theatre district, the Quartier des spectacles de Montreal. In other words, almost as much as the value of the programs government spokesmen say have run their course and been terminated.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has responded to the brouhaha with studied insouciance. Well, he may.
Canadians have bigger fish to fry. What bubble are these "artists" living in?
(See table for reduced and phased-out programs).
- - -
Phased Out as of April 1, 2009
- Canadian Memory Fund, $11.57M
- R&D component of Canadian Culture Online, $5.64M
- Northern Distribution Program, $2.10 M
- Culture.ca web portal, $3.80 M
- Canadian Cultural Observatory (culturescope.ca), $0.56M
- AV Trust - Feature Film Preservation and Access, $0.15M
- AV Trust - Canadian Music Preservation and Access, $0.15 M
- Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund, $1.5 M
- National Training Program for the Film and Video Sector $2.5 M
- Trade Routes (contributions as of April 1, 2009 and remainder of program, April 1, 2010) $7.1 M
Total: $35.07 million
Reduced:
- Canadian Arts and Heritage Sustainability Program (3 components as of April 1, 2009)$3.9 M
- Supply Chain Initiative component of the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (as of 2008-09) $1.0 M
- Support for Industry Development component of the Canada Magazine Fund (as of April 1, 2009) $0.5 M
Total: $5.4 million
PUBLICATION: Calgary Herald
DATE: 2008.09.25
EDITION: Final
SECTION: The Editorial Page
PAGE: A18
KEYWORDS: ELECTIONS; POLITICAL PARTIES; POLITICIANS; PRIME MINISTERS;CANADA
SOURCE: Calgary Herald
WORD COUNT: 588
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Much ado about arts funding
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Canadian soldiers risk death daily on Afghanistan's high and dusty plain, the Russians are staking out the Arctic, Canada is on the brink of ecological ruin -- if you believe the Green party -- and economically speaking, the sky, for once, may truly be falling.
Yet on Tuesday, Canadians were asked to feel the pain of Quebec's artists, who complain the Philistines-R-Us Conservative government has an agenda to "kill culture."
In French, the last e in "merde" is silent. Not so the opposition. "Grabbing hold of the aorta and putting the squeeze" on Quebec culture, was how NDP Leader Jack Layton put it. Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, barely more temperate, called the results of the government's strategic review, announced in the supplementary estimates to this spring's budget, an ideological broadside on artists and on freedom of expression.
First of all, it's no assault on free speech. Cutting a grant is not the same as an early morning call from the KGB.
More to the point, these over-the-top claims are substantiated neither by the amount of money involved -- $45 million of Heritage Canada's expanded budget has been reallocated -- nor the anatomical hyperbole unleashed.
What, one wonders, might the Conservatives have done? Surely, Canada's artistic soul must lay prostrate and bleeding at their jackbooted feet?
In the words of the late Quebec premier Rene Levesque, everybody should take a valium.
The Canada Council, funder of operas, orchestras and fungal performance art, is intact. So is its $182 million federal stipend, up $30 million on the Tory watch. The Tories have also upped the Canadian Television Fund $20 million, to $120 million, and that publicly funded purveyor of centre-left visuals, the National Film Board, is up $7 million, to $53 million, with another $325 million in NFB tax credits available.
And so on. Altogether, Canada's arts and culture funding has risen from $2.1 billion in fiscal 2005-06, to $2.3 billion in '08-09 -- the eight per cent increase Harper is talking about.
What the opposition is incorrectly calling "cuts," is the termination of some programs presented by staff to the heritage minister as obsolete, or having achieved their intended purpose. These have indeed been axed (see the list below).
Among the programs to be wound up are the Canadian Memory Fund, the Culture.ca web portal, the Canadian Cultural Observatory and the Canadian Arts and Heritage Sustainability Program that listed among its functions "assistance to reduce deficits and build working capital reserves."
The money thereby saved has been redirected to other cultural purposes.
Part of the furor is not everybody sees some of the new initiatives, such as supporting linguistic duality, or promoting French at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games, as truly cultural.
Reasonable people can disagree about that, but frankly, we're not seeing much reason in Montreal at the moment.
Quebec generally has done quite well from Conservative promises, with $2 million for jazz and humour festivals in Montreal, another $550,000 for the 2008 Quebec City Summer Festival and a robust $40 million for Montreal's theatre district, the Quartier des spectacles de Montreal. In other words, almost as much as the value of the programs government spokesmen say have run their course and been terminated.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has responded to the brouhaha with studied insouciance. Well, he may.
Canadians have bigger fish to fry. What bubble are these "artists" living in?
(See table for reduced and phased-out programs).
- - -
Phased Out as of April 1, 2009
- Canadian Memory Fund, $11.57M
- R&D component of Canadian Culture Online, $5.64M
- Northern Distribution Program, $2.10 M
- Culture.ca web portal, $3.80 M
- Canadian Cultural Observatory (culturescope.ca), $0.56M
- AV Trust - Feature Film Preservation and Access, $0.15M
- AV Trust - Canadian Music Preservation and Access, $0.15 M
- Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund, $1.5 M
- National Training Program for the Film and Video Sector $2.5 M
- Trade Routes (contributions as of April 1, 2009 and remainder of program, April 1, 2010) $7.1 M
Total: $35.07 million
Reduced:
- Canadian Arts and Heritage Sustainability Program (3 components as of April 1, 2009)$3.9 M
- Supply Chain Initiative component of the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (as of 2008-09) $1.0 M
- Support for Industry Development component of the Canada Magazine Fund (as of April 1, 2009) $0.5 M
Total: $5.4 million
299 bloor call control.
Senior Member
Here's the 'Culture in Danger' Video again, this one is the extended version (extra 5 minutes!) and also subtitled.
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=q3zBPnIYavI
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=q3zBPnIYavI
afransen
Senior Member
Are those programmes now unnecessary in the same way the public registry of Access to Information requests is now obsolete, now the it allows greater scrutiny of CPC government activities?
Apparently they shut down a program to catalogue Canadian cultural artificacts through a webportal... yes, an increasingly irrelevant program in this day and age.
Btw, the '8% annual increase' claim is not very credible. It includes funding for Vancouver 2010, including the torch relay. The CPC refused to release details, referring all inquiries to the Ministry. Interesting fact: Harper issued a government-wide gag-order, ordering ministries to refuse media requests until after the election. That's honesty and accountability for ya...
Apparently they shut down a program to catalogue Canadian cultural artificacts through a webportal... yes, an increasingly irrelevant program in this day and age.
Btw, the '8% annual increase' claim is not very credible. It includes funding for Vancouver 2010, including the torch relay. The CPC refused to release details, referring all inquiries to the Ministry. Interesting fact: Harper issued a government-wide gag-order, ordering ministries to refuse media requests until after the election. That's honesty and accountability for ya...
kEiThZ
Superstar
PUBLICATION: National Post
DATE: 2008.09.26
EDITION: National
SECTION: Issues & Ideas
PAGE: A15
BYLINE: John Moore
SOURCE: National Post
WORD COUNT: 755
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The working man's case for arts funding
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen Harper's campaign has been all about easy points. Teens with guns; lock 'em up. Average families (we all think we're average); give 'em a tax cut. Arts funding; let the sushi-eating, bow-tie-wearing snobs pay for their own meat dresses and urine-soaked crucifixes.
Earlier this week, the PM took a gratuitous swipe at the arts, cleverly widening the perceived divide between "ordinary working people" and the "elites" who make their living in creative endeavours. If it weren't so craven a political ploy, I would have to admire Harper for his canniness. Much of his strategy seems to hinge on telling suburbanites and rural Canadians that big city dwellers spend their days and nights mocking them, and that the only way to get even is to vote Conservative.
It's not easy to make a case for the arts, which is precisely why they are such a ripe target. And artists don't make it any easier. Most Canadians don't really have a warm and fuzzy impression of Wendy Crewson or Margaret Atwood. Outside of their books, sets and performance venues, artists have a frustrating inability to connect with anyone but each other.
But allow me to attempt to explain why the arts matter. First of all, to pretend that the arts are about impenetrable performance pieces and giant striped paintings is disingenuous. Rita MacNeil is just as much a Canadian artist as Karen Kaine. MacNeil's decades of eastern comfort should be just as much a source of pride and enjoyment as Kaine's dancing with Baryshnikov.
In most artistic media, government provides merely the additional sliver that puts events and institutions such as orchestras, theatre companies and ballets in the black: Ticket holders, not taxpayers, pay the lion's share of the performers' costs. And forget the idea that these performances are a clubhouse for millionaires. Anyone who's ever witnessed the last-minute rush for discount tickets at the Toronto Opera House knows it's not just the wealthy who attend.
Most arts funding has nothing to do with black-tie galas and chardonnay-greased piano recitals. Let me tell you a story. In the early 1980s, a fire-eater and a stilt-walker with
joyless day jobs hatched the idea of forming a performance company made up of buskers. With the help of a government grant, they began a relentless tour that was a critical success but a financial failure. Undaunted, they secured more government funding to create flashier costumes and an even more ambitious show. It was a hit. Today, the Cirque du Soleil is a multi-billion-dollar business and a brand just as iconic as Mounties in scarlets.
Let me take you back a little further in time to the mid 1970s, when a scrappy bunch of improv comedians put together a low budget TV show called SCTV. Thanks to taxpayer money, the careers of Eugene Levy, Katherine O'Hara, Andrea Martin, Martin Short, Rick Moranis and John Candy were born.
Hundreds more Canadians who have entertained us and brought our country pride got their start thanks to a government leg up. From Michael J. Fox to Sandra Oh, Rush to Kim Mitch-ell, Bryan Adams to Liona Boyd.
Picasso said, "Art washes away from us the dust of everyday life." Mischievous political minds twist that sentiment to suggest that art presumes itself to be superior to labour. Not at all. In fact, there's a reason why Stephen Harper has refused to repeat his grandly dismissive remarks about the arts in French. That's because Quebec maintains a European attitude about the arts. They are for everyone. An operatic aria can move a factory worker to tears just as easily as it does a socialite.
When Stephen Harper's working man goes home at the end of the day, he may turn to Corner Gas, John Mc-Dermott singing Danny Boy or the Montreal Symphony Orchestra's Bolero. He might put his kids to bed with a story from Robert Munsch and tuck himself in with a novel by Timothy Findley or Peter Robinson. All have benefitted one way or another from tax breaks or grants.
He might also have a daughter who dreams of becoming a ballet dancer or a son whose high school jazz band wants to record an album. Good luck selling those chocolate bars.
Arts funding isn't elitist. But denigrating the arts as the preserve of the upper crust -- that's about the most patronizing cliche there is.
-John Moore is host of the drive home show on NewsTalk 1010 CFRB. Thanks to arts funding, he once took a show he wrote from Montreal to Vancouver. He didn't make a dime.
DATE: 2008.09.26
EDITION: National
SECTION: Issues & Ideas
PAGE: A15
BYLINE: John Moore
SOURCE: National Post
WORD COUNT: 755
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The working man's case for arts funding
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen Harper's campaign has been all about easy points. Teens with guns; lock 'em up. Average families (we all think we're average); give 'em a tax cut. Arts funding; let the sushi-eating, bow-tie-wearing snobs pay for their own meat dresses and urine-soaked crucifixes.
Earlier this week, the PM took a gratuitous swipe at the arts, cleverly widening the perceived divide between "ordinary working people" and the "elites" who make their living in creative endeavours. If it weren't so craven a political ploy, I would have to admire Harper for his canniness. Much of his strategy seems to hinge on telling suburbanites and rural Canadians that big city dwellers spend their days and nights mocking them, and that the only way to get even is to vote Conservative.
It's not easy to make a case for the arts, which is precisely why they are such a ripe target. And artists don't make it any easier. Most Canadians don't really have a warm and fuzzy impression of Wendy Crewson or Margaret Atwood. Outside of their books, sets and performance venues, artists have a frustrating inability to connect with anyone but each other.
But allow me to attempt to explain why the arts matter. First of all, to pretend that the arts are about impenetrable performance pieces and giant striped paintings is disingenuous. Rita MacNeil is just as much a Canadian artist as Karen Kaine. MacNeil's decades of eastern comfort should be just as much a source of pride and enjoyment as Kaine's dancing with Baryshnikov.
In most artistic media, government provides merely the additional sliver that puts events and institutions such as orchestras, theatre companies and ballets in the black: Ticket holders, not taxpayers, pay the lion's share of the performers' costs. And forget the idea that these performances are a clubhouse for millionaires. Anyone who's ever witnessed the last-minute rush for discount tickets at the Toronto Opera House knows it's not just the wealthy who attend.
Most arts funding has nothing to do with black-tie galas and chardonnay-greased piano recitals. Let me tell you a story. In the early 1980s, a fire-eater and a stilt-walker with
joyless day jobs hatched the idea of forming a performance company made up of buskers. With the help of a government grant, they began a relentless tour that was a critical success but a financial failure. Undaunted, they secured more government funding to create flashier costumes and an even more ambitious show. It was a hit. Today, the Cirque du Soleil is a multi-billion-dollar business and a brand just as iconic as Mounties in scarlets.
Let me take you back a little further in time to the mid 1970s, when a scrappy bunch of improv comedians put together a low budget TV show called SCTV. Thanks to taxpayer money, the careers of Eugene Levy, Katherine O'Hara, Andrea Martin, Martin Short, Rick Moranis and John Candy were born.
Hundreds more Canadians who have entertained us and brought our country pride got their start thanks to a government leg up. From Michael J. Fox to Sandra Oh, Rush to Kim Mitch-ell, Bryan Adams to Liona Boyd.
Picasso said, "Art washes away from us the dust of everyday life." Mischievous political minds twist that sentiment to suggest that art presumes itself to be superior to labour. Not at all. In fact, there's a reason why Stephen Harper has refused to repeat his grandly dismissive remarks about the arts in French. That's because Quebec maintains a European attitude about the arts. They are for everyone. An operatic aria can move a factory worker to tears just as easily as it does a socialite.
When Stephen Harper's working man goes home at the end of the day, he may turn to Corner Gas, John Mc-Dermott singing Danny Boy or the Montreal Symphony Orchestra's Bolero. He might put his kids to bed with a story from Robert Munsch and tuck himself in with a novel by Timothy Findley or Peter Robinson. All have benefitted one way or another from tax breaks or grants.
He might also have a daughter who dreams of becoming a ballet dancer or a son whose high school jazz band wants to record an album. Good luck selling those chocolate bars.
Arts funding isn't elitist. But denigrating the arts as the preserve of the upper crust -- that's about the most patronizing cliche there is.
-John Moore is host of the drive home show on NewsTalk 1010 CFRB. Thanks to arts funding, he once took a show he wrote from Montreal to Vancouver. He didn't make a dime.
H
Hydrogen
Guest
Having once been associated with one of these now cut programs, it is clear that the writer is not well informed.