Tory Attacks on Culture: the Jerry Wasserman Editorials
We’ve already covered the recent Tory cuts to federal programs designed to promote Canadian arts and culture abroad. We were very impressed – and appreciative – of the courage that our colleague Jerry Wasserman showed in his recent editorials on his website Vancouverplays.com. We wanted to share them with our Plank Magazine readers and Jerry graciously allowed us to reproduce them here. You can also read some of the letters his first editorial generated on his website.
A Canadian Government that Hates Canadian Culture
The federal Conservatives have once again shown how much they despise Canadian arts and culture and the artists who create and perform it. Over the past few months they have boycotted the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards ceremony and attacked Canadian filmmakers with the censorship of Bill C-10, allowing the government to unilaterally cancel Telefilm grants to Canadian filmmakers AFTER filming has begun, based on unspecified ideological objections—offense to Conservative notions of morality or politics or whatever.
Now they’ve taken aim at two federal programs that promote Canadian arts and culture abroad, cancelling the $4.7 million PromArts program in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and the $9 million Trade Routes program in the Department of Heritage. Their reasons? I kid you not: because past grants have gone to what “senior Conservatives” call “a general radical,” “a left-wing columnist and author,” and “a left-wing and anti-globalization think tank.” This from an article in the August 8 Vancouver Sun from Canwest News Services—hardly left-wing or radical sources! Even they can’t seem to believe the stupidity, pettiness, and ideological narrow-mindedness involved.
That article and another in the Aug. 11 Globe and Mail point out that these programs have helped send an Inuit art exhibition from the Canadian Museum of Civilization to Brazil, fund a US tour of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and a lecture in Cuba by a former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada on the Canadian Charter of Rights, and have helped Hot Docs and the Canadian Independent Record Production Association market their cultural products abroad.
The government claims it’s about saving money. Bullshit. The money is pocket change in a $10 billion + surplus. It’s straight-out, right-wing Reds-under-beds politics of the Reagan-Bush variety. It’s appalling and a scandal. Time to vote these assholes out of existence. Imagine what Harper & Co would do with a majority . . .
A Canadian Government that Hates Canadian Culture, Part 2
Last week the federal Conservatives showed what they think of Canadian arts and culture and the artists who create and perform it by cancelling two federal programs that promote Canadian arts and culture abroad, the $4.7 million PromArts program and the $9 million Trade Routes program. Their reasons, according to an article in the Vancouver Sun, were that past grants have gone to what “senior Conservatives” call “a general radical,” “a left-wing columnist and author,” and “a left-wing and anti-globalization think tank.”
Responding to that nonsense, numerous Canadian cultural organizations protested the cuts, hardly any of them what you’d call “left wing”: Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Opera.ca, the Writers’ Union of Canada, Magnetic North Theatre Festival, and the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (PACT), among many. So what is the government’s response to these protests? “Ottawa to axe five more arts and culture programs” (Globe and Mail, Aug. 15). Two of them, the Stabilization Program and Capacity Building, directly help local companies that efficiently manage their budgets. The other axed programs are the A-V Presentation Trust, the Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund, and the National Training Program in Film and Video. Their titles explain their functions pretty clearly. Stabilization; Canadian Independent Film; Training in Film and Video. Clearly not initiatives worth supporting.
Read the lead editorial in the Globe and Mail for Monday, Aug. 18: “Culture Hung Out to Dry.” But it’s worse than that. In the run-up to a fall election, Harper is letting his people know what he’ll do if re-elected. He’ll teach those left-wing artsy-fartsies who complain about Bill C-10. If this is the government’s response to protests against cuts to a few small arts programs, just imagine what they’ll do if they get a majority. It makes me sick to think about it.