Evaluating Federal Arts Funding
The 1950's were great years for policy innovation. But maybe it's time to try something new.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that I’m an incurable cultural philistine. Or at least an incurably free market cultural philistine. I believe that the finest art and literature should serve - or even inspire - organic consumer demand. Public funding for the arts introduces perverse incentives. And besides, do we really want government deciding what we’ll get to read and watch? (And anyone who thinks that the government isn’t calling the shots has never filled out a grant application.)
But I’m just one of millions of Canadian voters and taxpayers, so my personal opinions are hardly the last word on the subject. Still, I’m not sure there’s ever been a truly public conversation about the shape our support for the arts should take; I certainly can’t remember any election having been fought on the issue.
This is not to suggest that we should eliminate all arts funding, or necessarily even reduce it. But as citizens, we do have a right and responsibility to know what our money is buying. To that end, it might be helpful to understand the arts ecosystem a bit better by talking about:
How three-quarters of a billion taxpayer dollars are spent each year on arts funding
Who’s picking the winners and losers
How Canadians are actually benefiting from all that spending
And whether there might be a better way to achieve our legitimate cultural goals
Where Does Canadian Arts Funding Go?
Here’s a breakdown of at least some of this year’s arts funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage:
And all that’s not counting the CBC.
Grants, by the way, are typically awarded based on eligibility criteria and the recipient’s ability to meet the objectives of the grant program. They usually involve less oversight and fewer compliance requirements than contributions. But both grants and contributions represent non-refundable federal spending.
Let’s understand a few of those funding organizations a bit better.
The Canada Media Fund was formed in 2009 with a mandate to “foster, promote and finance Canadian content, across all audiovisual platforms, and help share it with the world.” In other words, they cover at least a portion of the production costs for films and TV shows. The fund itself is partly underwritten by industry players like Bell, Rogers, and Telus. But the $154,146,077 figure above represents the government’s share.
The Canada Music Fund provides financial assistance for the "development of Canadian artists, the promotion of their music and the expansion of their audience". They also spend money to "help Canadian artists and industry professionals gain a greater profile at home and abroad, increase their artistic and business skills, and build their export-readiness and overall competitiveness."
The Canada Book Fund exists to help Canadian publishers produce more books by Canadian authors. A largely positive internal evaluation of the program back in 2018 observed how the fund could provide “no performance data to establish a link between marketing activities and demand for Canadian-authored books”. The review also gave us this hilarious formulation:
"After revising its sales target, the Program was successful in achieving the revised target between 2014-15 and 2017-18. The program experienced an overall decline in its domestic sales of Canadian-authored books by 14% in 2017-18, when compared to 2012-13."
George (“chocolate rations have increased from 30 grams to 20 grams”) Orwell would have been right proud of that one.
The Canada Periodical Fund provides financial assistance to Canadian print magazines, non-daily newspapers and digital periodicals. During COVID, the Special Measures for Journalism component of the Canada Periodical Fund provided temporary support for eligible publications. The fund was “relaunched” in 2022-23, issuing grants to 682 recipients.
While the Canada Periodical Fund’s primary $2.5 million budget is small, those COVID special measures grants totaled more than $60 million just in 2020-21. According to available data sources, around 130 of the nearly 800 recipient organizations received $100,000 or more. Eight got more than $400,000.
Finally, the Canada Council for the Arts, a federal Crown corporation accountable to Parliament through the Minister of Canadian Heritage, is tasked with contributing “to the vibrancy of a creative and diverse arts and literary scene through our grants, services, prizes and payments to Canadian artists and arts organizations”.
Does Arts Funding Work?
Well what do you mean by “work”?
I was recently interviewed on a technology podcast about my new book (The Complete Obsolete Guide to Generative AI). When asked for my thoughts on experiments using AI tools to create music, I responded that I wasn’t sure what the point was. After all, we already have 24/7 access to the very best recordings of just about every piece of music composed in the past three centuries. Do we really need more?
In other words, we live in a very different media and arts environment than existed in 1957 when the Canada Council for the Arts got its mandate. The entire world will have instant access to anything published by any Canadian creator. There’s infinite hosting capacity waiting for all the new Canadian voices telling all the new Canadian stories you can throw at it.
The real problem is still how hard it is to attract audience attention in an infinitely fragmented market. But that’s exactly the problem that government programs have so far completely failed to solve. As that Canada Book Fund evaluation noted, millions of dollars of “investment” simply failed to move the needle on domestic book sales.
Publisher and author Ken Whyte has written about how deeply dependent Canadian book publishers are on government funding, and yet “the vast majority of titles struggle to sell a few hundred copies” - and you just know that at least 40 of those copies went to authors’ family and friends. Whyte also observed that government program preferences “have helped produce a Canadian independent publishing sector weak on commercial fiction, commercial nonfiction, and researched nonfiction”.
If no one’s reading the stuff, why do we have to pay for it? And if the vast majority of government-funded TV and film productions are never picked up by networks and distributors, why fund them?
I know that most of them aren’t being picked up, because the Canada Media Fund site lists the more than 20,000 projects they’ve funded since 2010. How many of those can you name? Well, there’s Schitt’s Creek…
Just to be clear: I’m not advocating for a complete gutting of all arts funding in Canada. But, for the life of me, I can’t understand why we shouldn’t be talking about what we’re actually trying to accomplish:
Why do we actually want more Canadian voices to be heard both locally and around the world?
What specifically-Canadian stories need to be told?
Given spending constraints (many First Nation reserves still don’t have reliable access to clean water, for instance), how much should we be willing to spend to achieve those goals?
Ditch it all. Free market rules. If you produce good stuff, people will pay for it.
You don't allow for the fact a great many artists of the past had wealthy patrons who subsidized them. The Medici family by way of example. The British royal family alone and in conjunction with the Guild of St. George and the Tate gallery sponsored some of Britain's notable painters. And then we can't forget the Roman Catholic Church responsible for the Italian Renaissance and great architecture the world over.
As a recipient of a government grant taught art to indigenous youth in remote communities. The best student went into a B.A. program. Her work I was told, was considered favourably in her application. She went on to medical school. Funny the effect the arts can have.
While I will support the idea that perhaps government grants have become a more management than arts programing, save the wealthy of this country massively increasing patronage, it may be the best thing we have at the moment.