Conservative plan for arts and culture
Question mark
I almost sent this email to you blank. Title: Conservative plans for Heritage. Body of email: [blank]. But OK, let’s get into it.
Federal Conservatives, most likely the next federal government, have said nothing about their plan for arts and culture. They have said nada about the “decolonization” of museums and university curricula. (Provincial conservative governments differ on this: Ontario’s is the most shtum of all. Ontario school boards have gone identity politics crazy on the Ontario PC’s watch.) They keep not saying anything remotely related to many of the controversies in the culture - what some call ‘culture war issues’. They have not been at the forefront of the defense of free speech and freedom of assembly, with one highly mediatized exception (the trucker occupation of Ottawa). When I look back on the last few years, I see that they have treated Covid emergency and restrictions in the same way that the Liberal and the NDP provincial governments have, in contrast to the Republican-run states in the US. All this makes me think that whether the federal government is Liberal or Conservative, they inherit pre-existing structures and constraints and media narratives, and are reluctant to budge very much. They are led, instead of leading. This is where the populist argument begins to appear serious: there are no parties, there is only the Blob, and its technocrats and media messaging.
But let us presume that this is not the case. Right-of-centre media like the National Post, the Hub, the Dorchester Review and the True North have found their voice during the years of the rise of the successor ideology in cultural institutions, but the CP itself has been treading water. I wondered if I just hadn’t looked hard enough — surely, there are some Kultur policy wonks in the CP that have thought about what’s been going on and have some constructive proposals? Surely, there are bright people working on a plan for culture as we speak?
Wanting to interview someone on the topic for a piece for another outlet, I asked two Conservative insiders, themselves capable writers, to give me some leads on who I should talk to. One drew a blank, the other directed me to two people who used to hold important positions in the party but now work in other sectors.
A former Heritage minister in Stephen Harper’s government did not respond. Current Shadow Minister of Heritage did not respond. (There is next to nothing in her official social media content that is Heritage-related.) The CP’s director of communications did not respond.
When discussing this potential piece with the editor from the aforementioned outlet, he suggested that arts and people working in the arts and heritage are by and large neither conservative nor Conservative, and that the CP probably sees them as a lost cause. Not worth the trouble. After giving it some thought, I responded that I think there is that perception, but that I wouldn’t bet that the whole of culture is “progressive” and that while there are certainly some extremely vocal activists in the sector, the majority is probably the careerist silent type. Chiefly not very political—which could be a good thing—but also inert before any radical changes happening around them. The don’t rock the boat, the don’t burn the bridges with Canada Council type. Land acknowledgements, reconciliation, BLM, the rhetoric of decolonization, pronouns - silent careerist types adopt this by osmosis, and would behave exactly in the same way if the culture in the sector was of the opposite ideological kind.
There are many many donors in opera, classical music and classical theatre who are Conservative. As individuals, Conservatives give shedloads of money to arts. Any Conservative government that is ignoring this constituency would be foolish. A lot of Conservatives are well positioned to make their opinions heard in culture. But still - not much comes through.
I have started parsing the CP videos and the speeches by the CP leader and its front bench in search of clues. There are very few.
I was intrigued by this appearance of the Magna Carta in Pierre Poilievre’s speech at the Calgary Stampede the other day. There is a history nerd among his speech writers who got this in, somehow. That same person has also clearly read Janet Ajzenstat. I can imagine the conversation behind the scenes. “Magna Carta?? No one will know what you mean!” “It doesn’t matter! We have to trace our tradition of freedom down to something other than Trudeau Sr’s Charter!” Etc.
“…[O]ur freedom, while it was rooted in an 800-year-old tradition that started with the Magna Carta and was passed down from one generation to another” (he goes on to say that it depends on a strong national defence).
But then I watched the Canada Day video that was released on Poilievre’s social media and it almost lost me in the first couple of minutes. “Indigenous people have been here since time immemorial”, are you serious, when even the progressives have stopped saying that? And Nazism and Communism are both subsets of “ugly socialism”? Painful. But then it gets better in the second half, with a strong showing by John Diefenbaker and another riff on our “ancient liberties”. “As we celebrate what Dief called this heritage of freedom, let me say, Happy Canada Day.” OK, made it to B. But there’s work to do.
I’m trying to remember the Harper government heritage vibes and not a lot comes to mind, but I do remember that there was extra money for the marking of the War of 1812 bicentenary, and a strong interest in the Franklin Expedition. Harper himself was not a stranger to anti-elitist jabs about “wine and cheese galas” while “ordinary Canadians can’t make ends meet” and there have been some cuts in Heritage but to people protesting (ACTRA stars, on this occasion), he said that “while funding for some programs has gone down, other programs have seen a boost and overall funding for the federal Heritage Department has increased by eight per cent since his government took power.” The overall impression is of randomness and not a very systemic approach, and this is something that future Conservative governments should be aware of. They should stop phoning-in the heritage portfolio.
(Mary Walsh ambush-French kissing the Leader of the Opposition Stephen Harper)
What would I be thinking about if I were a Kultur policy wonk inside the CP? What would my ideal plan look like? Or let’s say it’s late night, there’ve been drinks, and I’m sitting next to a Conservative powerbroker and writing this on a napkin. Which he can have for free.
Depoliticize arts funding. The arts councils are technically arms-length from the government, so I’m not sure how far the government can wade into their inner workings, but some way should be found towards walking back the Canada Council’s ardent ideological turn. Maybe an entirely different exec and middle management lineup is what would do the trick. But these are not sinecure jobs. People who know what they’re doing and who have a spine will be needed.
Don’t “defund” this and “cut” that; rather, offer a plan for a more purposeful art funding. (Again, depends how much you can change the calcified peer reviewing system in place. I think it’s worth a look.) Namely, if a theatre company is not producing anything for years except DEI workshops, board self-cancellations and rental contracts with other, producing companies, they should perhaps not be getting that operating grant? Especially because there are so many other growing companies vying for that spot in the operating grant plan. Build in incentives to company grants that go beyond “submit a report at the end of the year and list all ethnic minorities that you engaged.” Currently there are probably more DEI incentives than any other kind. You will also have to have a look at the bureaucratic mastodons (say, the TSO) and ask if the staff vs creative output ratio is the right one. (This is a problem for many charities and NGOs too.) It’s also perfectly legitimate to ask why our performing arts sector shuts down in summer (except for the summer festivals) and takes its sweet time coming back in October, after Tiff has sucked all the air out of September.
If the councils are irreparably captured for the time being, open up a different channel of funding. Governments do this a lot—there’s been a lot of money for Canada’s sesquicentennial in 2017, for example, and some organizations used the funds for improving long-term capacity. Related, however: beware of the Shiny New Thing. One of the first things that Melanie Joly’s Heritage department did was introduce the big push to digitization in every corner of the sector, including, notably, performing arts. There’s this new pot of money for y’all, but you need to show me you’re doing something INNOVATIVE with DIGITAL. No they don’t mean put your performance on the internet, silly. Something much more INNOVATIVE. You tell me what. What do you mean, you perform before a live audience only, what kind of a bug is that?
Fluctuating, feast or famine income is a big issue in an artist’s life, and France for example has a tailor-made employment insurance system just for its freelance workers in performing arts, les intermittents du spectacles. They qualify for a limited time based on hours worked and with a promise of continuous professional development. There are a lot of seasonal professions here—from contract faculty to landscape technicians—that would come under this umbrella. I’m not saying we need the same (I think our problem is the smallness of the market), but some thinking should be put into the growing freelancing, contract and seasonal workforce of the 21-st century which also contains a lot of arts workers.
We have world-class artistic training in most disciplines, but our graduates need to leave the country to build a career. This is not a problem of the inflation of the humanities degrees; this is highly specialized training that produces a globally employable arts worker (say, an opera singer). How do we grow our own arts markets, is what I’m interested in asking politicians. What is your plan for growth (in the arts), and for more productivity (same)? Housing crisis, inadequate public transit and lack of fast inter-city trains are major factors in the slowing of growth and innovation (in the arts too).
You’ll have to find a way to talk about culture, however, that’s not about money making. Yes the industry benefits other industries (hospitality, tourism—education—heck, science and tech) too. But you need to talk about arts as valuable in their own right, as a kind of infrastructure that any functioning society needs. I don’t care, you can adopt the nation talk, I’ll welcome anything at this point. You can be proud of your culture because it’s your national culture, yes you can take a page out of Quebec’s book. You can be religious and see the capacity for creativity as god given human potential which should not be neglected. You can talk about the ‘soul’ and what’s good for it, you can talk about higher purposes. Ancient liberties, even - to express ourselves though arts too. Just put some thought into it and then talk about it.
Germany. France. Talk to some Conservatives in those two countries. Italy. Spain. But Germany and France primarily. Germany has an insanely wealthy economy AND puts insane amounts of funding into its arts and heritage. It’s a virtuous circle. I’d talk to them, or France, whose President can cite Moliere by heart and personally cares who gets hired to lead the Paris Opera. And German politicians? You gotta elbow them out of your way to get to your seat in Bayreuth. Skip the Brits; Conservatives there have left a proper mess. Or use them as a cautionary tale.
This is an excellent, very thoughtful consideration of a very important topic. Please send a copy to Pierre Poilievre, who I hope will appreciate the good advice.
"Don’t “defund” this and “cut” that; rather, offer a plan for a more purposeful art funding."
This whole section betrays a fundamental misunderstanding about the relationship the CPC has with the bulk of this nation's scribbling class. ANY attempt by a Conservative government to "change" or even provide a "plan for change" to the Arts/Culture sector will be portrayed as "brutal cuts", no matter what the actual suggestions are.
...or do you not recall the "muzzled scientists" accusation which dogged Harper? Scientists who wanted to publish findings counter to the government narrative have fared no better under Trudeau, but not one word in the national press....