The following is a summary of commitments from the leading federal political parties relevant to arts and culture sectors. The Canadian Arts Coalition wishes to thank GLOBAL PUBLIC AFFAIRS for their assistance in collecting this information.

Click the buttons to jump to each party’s arts platform:

Federal Candidates’ Debate on Culture

Candidates from the major federal parties present their commitments with regard to culture and discuss solutions to challenges in the cultural sector. Catherine Perrin (Radio-Canada host) moderates the debate. The candidates are Steven Guilbeault (Liberal Party), Steve Shanahan (Conservative Party), Martin Champoux (Bloc Québécois), Alexandre Boulerice (NDP) and Mathieu Goyette (Green Party). Livestreamed on CPAC Monday, September 13. Replay available at the link below.

In addition, the CAC asked specific arts policy questions of each federal party to be answered in a recorded video format. The questions posed are posted here and video responses received are posted with the party’s platform listing, below.

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Liberal Party of Canada

Arts and Culture Recovery

–        Launch a new Arts and Culture Recovery Program that will match ticket sales for performing arts, live theatres, and other cultural venues to compensate for reduced capacity.

–        Extend COVID-related insurance coverage for media production stoppages to support 150,000 Canadian jobs.

–        Implement a COVID-19 transitional support program to provide emergency relief to out-of-work artists, craftsmen, creators, and authors who are primarily self-employed or independent contractors.

–        Extend the Canada Recovery Hiring Program to March 31, 2022, so businesses can hire more workers and Canadians can get back on the job.

–        Provide Canada’s hard-hit tourism industry with temporary wage and rent support of up to 75% of their expenses to help them get through the winter

–        Canada Small Business Financing Program Increase the maximum loan amount from $350,000 to $500,000 and extend loan coverage from 10 to 15 years for equipment and leasehold improvements. This also includes the commitment to expand borrower eligibility to include non-profit and charitable social enterprises.

–        Hold a summit, within the first 100 days, on plans to restart the industry.

–        Protect Canadian artists, creators, and copyright holders by making changes to the Copyright Act, including amending the Act to allow resale rights for artists.

Music, TV, Film

–        Within the first 100 days, reintroduce legislation to reform the Broadcasting Act to ensure foreign web giants contribute to the creation and promotion of Canadian stories and music.

–        Modernize the institutions (Telefilm, National Film Board, Canada Media Fund) and funding tools that support Canada’s audio-visual sector, including video games, in order to make funding platform agnostic and open to more traditionally underrepresented storytellers, while favouring Canadian productions over foreign ones and ensuring that Canadians are better equipped to own and benefit from the content that they produce.

–        Support Canadian feature films by permanently increasing funding to Telefilm Canada by $50 million.

–        Support Canadian television productions by doubling the government contribution, over three years, to the Canada Media Fund.

–        Increase the proportion of funding for French audiovisual content at Telefilm and the Canada Media Fund from 33% to 40% to support a better presence of French-language productions.

–        Ensure better and stable funding for the music sector by increasing the annual contribution to the Canada Music Fund to $50 million by 2024-2025.

–        Provide the Indigenous Screen Office with $13 million per year, permanently, so more Indigenous stories can be told and seen.

Employment Insurance

–        Introduce a new EI benefit for self-employed Canadians, delivered through the tax system, that would provide unemployment assistance comparable to EI and lasting for as much as 26 weeks. Self-employed Canadians seeking to access this benefit would only be responsible to contribute the portion they would normally pay if they were a salaried employee. Further details regarding this benefit will be developed over the coming year with the launch of this new benefit happening in January 2023.

–        Strengthen rights for workers employed by digital platforms so that they are entitled to job protections under the Canada Labour Code and establish new provisions in the Income Tax Act to ensure this work counts toward EI and CPP while also making these platforms pay associated contributions as any employer would.

–        Move forward with a stronger and more inclusive EI system that addresses gaps made obvious during COVID-19. Based on the input received from consultations on the future of EI that are currently underway, a Liberal government will bring forward a vision for a new and modern EI system that covers all workers, including workers in seasonal employment, and which is simpler and more responsive for both workers and employers. The Liberal Party also commits to ensuring the realities of artists and cultural workers are considered in upcoming reforms to the EI system.

–        Establish an EI Career Insurance Benefit. This benefit will be available to people who have worked continuously for the same employer for five or more years and are laid off when the business closes. The Career Insurance Benefit will kick in after regular EI ends, providing an additional 20% of insured earnings in the first year following the layoff, and an extra 10% in the second year. This will give workers up to an almost $16,900 over two years, providing significant help at a difficult time.

Cultural Diplomacy

–        Help Canadian cultural industries succeed abroad by issuing a mandate to BDC and EDC to support the growth of creative industries in new markets.

–        Launch a new cultural diplomacy strategy with an annual budget of $20 million per year to leverage the work done by our artists and cultural industries to support Canada’s diplomatic goals.

–        Forge an international coalition to work on a new UNESCO Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Content Online.

–        Celebrate Canada’s unique francophone cultures through the promotion of the French language across our diplomatic missions and in our work to transform the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie.

Books

–        Invest $43 million per year to support Canadian authors and books publishers by increasing, by 50%, funding for through the Canada Book Fund, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Public Lending Right Program.

French language in Canada

–        Fully implement the legislative and administrative measures outlined in the 2021 reform document.

–        Work with official language communities, both French and English, to introduce, within the first 100 days, the proposed An Act for the Substantive Equality of French and English and the Strengthening of the Official Languages Act. 

–        Support the maintenance and vitality of official language minority communities by helping build, renovate, and develop educational and community spaces that serve official language minority communities.

–        Permanently increase funding for post-secondary institutions in official language minority communities to $80 million per year. This new commitment of $240 million over 4 years could be used to strengthen the Université de l’Ontario français, Campus Saint-Jean at the University of Alberta, and post-secondary institutions in Northern Ontario and New Brunswick and counter cuts made by Conservative governments.

–        Continue to contribute to the funding of Saint-Jean Baptiste Day celebrations in Quebec and across the country

–        Protect the institutions of Quebec’s English-speaking community and support the creation of new organizations in support of this community through initiatives such as the Leadership Institute.

–        Create a strategy to support entrepreneurs in official language minority communities to ensure their vitality through the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs).

–        Create a fellowship for 1000 students and new graduates and offer French Language Training to 3^rd and 4^th year students to help bridge current gaps including language barriers.

Racialized Artists and Journalists

–        Develop a new $50 million Changing Narratives Fund to empower diverse communities, including BIPOC journalists and creatives, with the tools to tell their own stories and promote diverse voices in arts and culture and across media

News and Digital Giants

–        Introduce legislation, within 100 days, that would require digital platforms that generate revenues from the publication of news content to share a portion of their revenues with Canadian news outlets. This legislation would be based on the Australian model and level the playing field between global platforms and Canadian news outlets. The bill will also allow news publishers to work together to prepare for collective negotiation.

CBC/Radio Canada

–        Update CBC/Radio-Canada’s mandate to ensure that it is meeting the needs and expectation of today’s Canadian audiences, with a unique programming that distinguishes it from private broadcasters.

–        Provide $400 million over 4 years to CBC/Radio-Canada so that it is less reliant on private advertising with a goal of eliminating advertising during news and other public affairs shows.

Canadians with disabilities

–        Create a new stream of the Youth Employment and Skills Strategy Program (YESS) to support 5000 opportunities a year for young people with disabilities.

Online Hate

–        Introduce legislation within its first 100 days to combat serious forms of harmful online content, specifically hate speech, terrorist content, content that incites violence, child sexual abuse material and the non-consensual distribution of intimate images.

Canada Workers Benefit

–        Continue to expand the Canada Workers Benefit to support about 1 million additional Canadians in low wage jobs, who will be eligible for up to $1,400 a year.

–        Ensure that Canadians who qualify are automatically enrolled, and that the benefit is delivered on a quarterly basis.

–        Continue to ensure that secondary earners—mostly women—can exclude up to $14,000 of their working income when income-testing the Canada Workers Benefit, so that families can receive up to $2,400.

Conservative Party of Canada

• Broadcasting
  • The Conservative Party, if elected, will require large digital streaming services to reinvest a significant portion of their Canadian gross revenue into producing original Canadian programming, of which a mandated proportion must be French-language programming, which exempting uploaded content onto social media websites. It will also streamline and reduce the regulatory burden placed on conventional Canadian broadcasters, including CRTC license fees and Canadian Media Fund contribution requirements.
• Tourism
  • Conservatives will launch the Explore and Support Canada initiative with a 15% tax credit for vacation expenses of up to $1,000 per person for Canadians to vacation in Canada in 2022, helping our tourism sector get back on its feet.
• Charities
  • To boost charitable donations, Canada’s Conservatives will also increase the disbursement quota for charitable foundations to 7.5% to unlock billions of dollars built up tax-free in foundations and put this money to work to help Canadians.
• Copyright
  • Conservatives will recognize and correct the adverse economic impact for creators and publishers from the uncompensated use of their works in a manner consistent with the unanimous recommendations of the Heritage Committee of the House of Commons Report in 2019.
• Employment Insurance
  • Conservatives will launch a Super EI that temporarily provides more generous benefits (75% of salary instead of 55%) when a province goes into recession (a 0.5% increase in the unemployment rate, as defined by the “Sahm Rule”). EI will return to normal levels once the recession is over, as evidenced by three months of job gains
  • Conservatives will also require gig economy companies to make contributions equivalent to CPP and EI premiums into a new, portable Employee Savings Account every time they pay their workers. The money will grow tax-free and can be withdrawn by the worker when needed.

The Conservatives also included commitments on official languages, CBC/Radio-Canada, historical monuments, book publishing, online hate, Canadian media, and mental health. The Conservative Party of Canada released its full campaign platform, entitled Canada’s Recovery Plan.

NDP

• Modernize the Broadcasting Act to create a level playing field between Canadian broadcasters and foreign streaming services
• Increase funding for CBC and Radio-Canada
• Ensure that arts and cultural institutions receive stable, long-term funding to grow and promote Canada’s diverse cultures and histories.
• Extend support to Canadian media to assist them in making the digital transition.
• Provide financial support for Indigenous theatre at the National Arts Centre as part of our larger efforts to honour and support Indigenous arts and culture.
• Finally, recognizing the special challenges faced by people who make a living in the arts and culture industry, we’ll make life more affordable by putting in place income tax averaging for artists and cultural workers.

The NDP released its commitments regarding Canadian arts and culture. The full NDP platform can be found here.

Green Party of Canada

Green Innovation: Artistic engagement with the climate crisis to mobilize the public

Our Green innovation is to add direct funding opportunities for creators and producers to engage with the climate crisis in order to increase public support for meaningful government action. The Green Party of Canada believes that federal support for Canada’s creative sector must be adjusted to give our artists a clear incentive to address the priority issue facing all of humanity: the climate emergency.

• Support artists to fully engage with the climate emergency.
  
• Federal support for our cultural infrastructure must be increased.
  
• Embrace Indigenous cultural values with regard to nature.
  
• COVID-19 Recovery

1. Increase support for indoor or outdoor arts performances required to adapt to become compliant with COVID regulations. 
2. Provide $25 million in additional funding to aid museums and cultural organizations in both post-pandemic reopening and continuing to offer accessible digital offerings. 
3. Ensure the viability of our cultural infrastructure in consultation with Arts Service Organizations, professional associations, trade associations and unions across the creative sector. 

• Canadian Cultural Identity

1. Increase funding to $1 billion over 3 years to all of Canada’s arts and culture organizations  including the Canada Council for the Arts, Telefilm Canada, orchestras, theatres, galleries and publishers.
2. Increase support for community arts programs and facilities across Canada by establishing stable base funding at a set percentage of the federal budget. 
3. Protect Canada’s cultural identity during trade negotiations and ensure arts and cultural representation on international trade missions. 
4. Enact Copyright reform as envisaged by the current Heritage Committee report. 
5. Reform the Canada Revenue Act to allow arts and culture workers to benefit from a tax averaging plan that will take into account the fact that lean years often precede and follow a good year when a show is produced, a book is published, or a grant or a prize is won. 
6. Establish permanent funding for festivals and events that celebrate Canadian Heritage. 

• Indigenous Cultures and Heritage

1. Provide protection for Indigenous intellectual and artistic property rights. 
2. Support the creation of historical information that sheds light on our colonial past wherever related statuary or plaques are currently in place. 
3. Provide $100 million in funding and incentives over three years for the creation and conservation of Indigenous art forms, particularly creative knowledge that is passed through the generations. 
4. Provide funding and incentives for artists to travel to Indigenous communities to stimulate young artists, as per one of the original aims of the PNIAI. 
5. Support the Canadian Museums Association in ensuring, in collaboration with Aboriginal peoples and in accordance with the Calls to Action, continued compliance of museum policies and best practices with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. 
6. Establish a dedicated national funding program, in collaboration with Aboriginal peoples and the Canadian Museums Association, for commemoration projects on the theme of reconciliation.  

• Climate and Social Justice

1. Increase funding to all federal agencies including the Canada Council for the Arts, the National Film Board and Telefilm Canada to initiate programs to support creative programming that addresses the climate crisis. 

• Outreach to New Artists, Youth Artists and Rural Communities 

1. Provide funding to promote and encourage artists and art events to tour Canada’s rural regions, as well as to provide funding incentives in support of artists from rural communities. 
2. Provide incentives to all provinces and territories to restore and improve arts and culture components in schools and extracurricular activities

• CRTC, Media and CanCon

1. Proceed with regulating the powerful platforms and streaming services through the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) as envisioned in Bill C-10 
2. Ensure that the CRTC reserves more bandwidth for independent and non-profit stations. 
3. Ensure that the CRTC maintains and updates their Canadian Content (CanCon) regulations and definitions. 
4. Provide stable base funding for the CBC so it can continue to provide quality Canadian content television and radio programming in both official languages, as well as programming both in and to encourage the learning of Indigenous languages. 
5. Call for an Independent Commission to undertake a comprehensive study of the concentration of media ownership in Canada in comparison to other western countries and recommend how to diversify media ownership and strengthen the depth and breadth of news reporting, especially local news, in Canada. .   

Bloc Québécois

Language

–        The Bloc Québécois will use all its resources to ensure that the federal Official Languages ​​Act no longer applies to private businesses in Quebec, replacing with the Charter of the French language in Quebec.

–        The Bloc Québécois will table a bill to make sufficient knowledge of French a condition for obtaining citizenship from Quebec.

–        The Bloc Québécois will fight with Acadians and Franco-Canadians to ensure that the reform of the Official Languages ​​Act primarily serves the ability of these communities to live and work in French.

Broadcasting

–        The Bloc Québécois proposes the repatriation of all cultural powers and the creation of a Quebec organization replacing the CRTC.

–        The Bloc Québécois is committed to improving and re-tabling broadcasting reforms, especially the essential amendments which  ensured the protection of Canadian and Quebecois content, discoverability, and the enhancement of Quebec arts and the production of French-language content.

–        The Bloc Québécois will impose negotiations on digital giants with Quebec content creators and Canadians in order to establish an equitable income sharing system.

–        The Bloc pledges to stand behind Quebec culture in order to ensure the sustainability and predictability of programs and cultural and tourism subsidies, while the sector, its creators, its distributors and its small and major events, will continue suffer the consequences of the pandemic over the next few years. In addition, it will ensure that the print and regional media are part of this reform.

–        The Bloc Québécois will demand that the taxes collected from digital giants be redirected to a fund dedicated to the arts and to Quebec culture and media.

Tourism/Quebec Image

–        The Bloc Québécois will launch a campaign to promote Quebec’s image in the world and a diplomatic effort to ensure its international presence. This campaign will involve the inalienable right to self-determination of Quebecers as well as the positive role played by Quebec in the world.

Canada Recovery Benefit

–        The BQ supports the suspension of the CRB, while ensuring that it can be reactivated according to the intensity of future waves and that it remains in effect for carefully targeted sectors and the job categories for which the recovery remains slow, including the cultural sector or aeronautics.

Employment Insurance

–        The Bloc Québécois will propose a comprehensive reform of employment insurance which will protect all workers and will take into account the increasingly unavoidable realities of self-employed or special status workers, as well as seasonal work.

SMEs and Hardest Hit Businesses

–        The Bloc Québécois will propose changes to business assistance programs to ensure the vitality of all of our SME models, including for festivals and seasonal businesses.

The Bloc Québécois released has released its election platform. Written in French, you can find the full document here.