• Victor Schukov

Monday, October 6, 2008

A reality check on government funding of the arts

posted by Victor Schukov at 8h35

Prime Minister Stephen Harper trims $45 million  off a $4-billion arts subsidy and the artists doth protest like the villagers who storm Frankenstein’s castle, just short of waving torches and pitchforks. It’s good to have the time to storm the castle. Myself, I have to be at my regular job during the day. At night and on weekends, I’m an artist.

In the last 15 years, I have written hundreds of articles for four newspapers, published a novel and taught journalism in two schools. And I never got a degree in anything related to all that and I never asked for a nickel of subsidy from the government because I have always felt that one has to succeed based on one’s own tenacity and merit, not at the expense of my fellow taxpayers.

Tax dollars are for health, education and the social care of our citizens. And if there isn’t enough of that, you shouldn’t be complaining about a 10-per-cent cut in the arts.

Bruce Willis worked as a bartender until he became famous. Neil Young never had a subsidy. I believe that the busy rise to the occasion, some even becoming giants. Juno winning bands don’t depend on the government’s magic arts wand to be flourished in their direction. If they have rent to pay until they are discovered, they moonlight at whatever jobs that gets them through the night.

I’ve said this before: If you want to succeed in the most coveted field like the arts, get a job and work hard towards your dream.

Meanwhile, your Margaret Atwoods take time from their garishly dressed, elite cocktail parties to temporarily throw on their peon costumes and stand dramatically before venting, less successful artists, to boldly say things like, “Artists make vital contributions to society, an $86-billion industry, blah blah blah.”

Of course the arts is vital and huge. I wish we did nothing else but indulge in the very noble arts. But even if you took the whole $4-billion budget away and put it into badly needed national welfare, don’t you think that we would still have as many artists making our lives more enjoyable? In fact, the ones that succeeded would most probably be the cream of the crop. And it wouldn’t be at the expense of your social services.
Our system of government makes it easy to dole out money to anyone who fills out the proper forms and paints three colourful stripes onto a canvas the size of an office building.

When my novel got into local libraries, a federal department called the Public Lending Rights Commission started sending me $35 a year because I was a published Canadian author of one measly book. I didn’t even fill out any forms. They just did their annual catalogue search and sent me money I didn’t need. (I gave the money to charity.)

Every year, more than 6,000 new books and 300 authors are added to that menu. Can you imagine how much of your money the PLRC sends to the not-exactly-starving Margaret Atwoods every year?

When I was a managing editor in a small private publishing house, I was required to fill out a form that essentially gave the owner a cheque for more than $100,000 every year just because he was a Canadian publisher. And he didn’t need the money. It was gravy.

The government does not discriminate efficiently and that’s a problem. They can’t be faulted for not being able to decide what’s art and what’s not. Not even artists can do that. Art is subjective. Funding is objective.

When the two collide, you have gross misallocation of where the money really belongs.

Public funding of the arts should be voluntary. The difference between dropping a buck into an open guitar case in the métro and tax dollars going into buying a new theme song for Hockey Night In Canada are light years apart. One is given willingly and the other is plucked off my wages, whether I agree with it or not.

But artists are independent, they say. So be it. There are plenty of rich patrons of the arts. All that is expected of the worthy is a passion to succeed and to canvas these angels.

The solution is not to put fancy experts or non partisan people into federally funded committees to choose who gets to dip into the cookie jar. The answer is to cut the whole ship loose and let the art community run itself, privately.

Some people will resent this position, but tell that to my friend, an exhausted nurse who is forced to work long hours at a wage that doesn’t give full value for the care giving she provides to sick people, while at any point in time some of my paycheque goes into funding some slanted documentary on the October Crisis.

Our parents were right: Get a job, pay the bills and pursue what you want on the side until you succeed.