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Why Canada Supports Its Artists The following text is a reprint of an op-ed article by Council Chairman Allan Gotlieb and Director Joyce Zemans that appeared in The Globe and Mail on 31 January. In the past five months, the US Congress, press and arts community have been en gaged in a heated debate about whether government should support the arts and, if so, on what-and whose-terms. Recent events in Canada that parallel the US situation have aroused deep concern among artists and other Canadians. The US debate began with two exhibitions that Senator Jesse Helms found objection able. They were partly financed by the US counterpart to the Canada Council, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The Senate initially adopted a "Helms amendment" that would effectively have banned the NEA from supporting any proj ect that might offend anyone. The amendment was removed in the Sen ate's final decision, but the debate is far from over. In the months ahead, the issue of government subsidy and freedom of ex pression will occupy centre stage as con gressional subcommittees discuss whether the NEA should continue to exist. In Canada, at both the provincial and fed eral levels, governments are trying to re strain their spending. Taxpayers are in creasingly critical of expenses whose immediate and direct benefit to them is not obvious. In a campaign against federal spending, a national lobby group has criticized nine grants made by the Canada Council be tween 1985 and 1989 - a period in which the Council received 70,000 applications and awarded 20,000 grants-solely, it appears on the basis of the titles of the projects. Even a minister of the Crown has called into question Canada's arm's-length financ ing policy, the Council's accountability, and some of the people to whom it has awarded grants. A new censoriousness appears to be gaining strength. It is time to ask why Canada supports its artists and whether the way in which it does so is still appropriate. Less than 40 years ago, the Massey Com mission, examining the bleak cultural land scape of the country, reported that profes sional theatre was "moribund," that Eng lish Canadians produced a grand total of 14 works of fiction a year, that no novelist or poet "can make even a modestly comfort able living" and "no composer of music can live at all on what Canada pays him." As a result of Vincent Massey's recommen dations, Canada made a conscious decision to support its artists, and set up the Canada Council. When the Council started business in 1957, it provided grants to four theatre compa nies. Today it finances 197 across the coun try. The number of orchestras supported has risen from 10 to 31. The Council also provides grants to 164 publishing houses, 65 film and video organizations, 30 dance companies, 50 artist centres and more than 80 public art galleries and 100 cultural periodicals. The sad reality is that a little money goes a very long way in the arts because many artists are still miserably paid for their work. The most important purpose of government is to act as a trustee for future generationsa trustee of its cultural development and legacy as well as its defence and economic well-being. It is equally vital that govern ments preserve the cultural and the natural environments in which their people live. Like schools, universities, hospitals, parks and libraries, the arts cannot fully pay their own way, and require public support to survive. But unlike those other institutions, the arts cost relatively little money. Indi vidual Canadians spend $4 a year for the Canada Council-considerably less than the cost of admission to a movie. Canada set the Council up as an "arm'slength" agency. What this means is both simple and profound. The protection built into the Canada Council Act ensured both the independence of artistic thought and expression, on the one hand, and the Coun cil's accountability to the public through Parliament on the other. The Act was intended to preclude patron age (no politician, or bureaucrat for that matter, can order the Council to refuse a grant). Authority for the Council-its policies, pro grams, budgets and grant decisions-belongs to its board, composed of 21 members of the public selected from across the country and from many walks of life. To ensure that the major criterion for grants is artistic merit, the board makes its funding deci sions on the recommendations of qualified and knowledgeable professionals from the field. Close to 1,000 Canadian arts profes sionals evaluate Council applications each year. Evaluation by peers is the basic method of decision-making in the professions. But no engineers, accountant, university teacher, scientist-or artist-will make the absurd claim that it is foolproof. Predictions of ultimate success are espe cially difficult in the arts and pure science. English poet Philip Larkin rightly observed that, "Nothing... is harder than to form an estimate even remotely accurate of our own contemporary artists." There will never be a mechanism capable of providing iron clad assurance that assistance to a young playwright will produce another Shakespeare or Moliere or a foolproof method of identi fying the next Newton or Einstein. Of all the Human activities governments fund, the arts are most susceptible to criti cism from the public. This is a direct result of their intense powers of communication. Movies, songs, poems, plays speak to us with an overwhelming intimacy and direct ness. An essential function of the arts is to in spire, astonish and challenge us, to enable us to see reality anew. It is because of the extraordinary power of the arts that many democratic societies, including our own, have taken crucial precautions to shield them from political interference and con trol. The events of the past few months in the United States and Canada confirm the es sential wisdom of these safeguards. But they also demonstrate with great clarity the need for vigilance in defence of freedom of thought and expression, a principle funda mental to both our financing of the arts and democracy itself. 11