On December 10th, over 5000 people rallied across the country against controversial omnibus Bill C-45. This legislation makes sweeping changes to the Indian Act and drastically reduces protections for waterways without any consultation with First Nations, in direct opposition to existing treaties. You may not have heard about those rallies on December the 10th because our national media was busy covering a certain little well-dressed monkey lost at an Ikea store.
Chief Theresa Spence has been on her hunger strike since December 11th. She seeks a meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and a representative of the Queen to discuss our country’s existing treaties. “All treaties were signed by the Crown — the government — and our ancestors … the treaties are there for a reason and either the prime minister doesn’t understand them, or he doesn’t want to respect them,” Spence has said.
Movements of solidarity have popped up across the country and in other parts of the world. In Toronto, Native Earth Performing Arts has organized a Fasting Relay in solidarity with Chief Spence. Artists in the community have each taken a day throughout Spence’s hunger strike to fast for the day in support of her efforts, and to send a unified message to the Prime Minister to meet with the First Nations leader.
What Chief Theresa Spence is doing is forcing the government and all of Canadian society to decide publicly whether they care if she – and by extension her people and our shared land – ceases to live. She is willing to die. This is an extreme measure that I have not had the courage to take. With this fasting relay, I am proud to join with my many beautiful communities to support Chief Spence in this small yet symbolically significant way.
~Tara Beagan, Artistic Director, Native Earth Performing Arts
Below is an ever-growing list of relay participants as gathered on Native Earth’s facebook event page. Please add your name to the comments section if you have joined the fast and are not on the list, and be sure to let Native Earth know if you haven’t yet joined the relay but would like to.
Find out more about upcoming Idle No More events on their official website here.
Native Earth Fasting Relay Timeline
Dec 12 Chief Spence began.
After 24 hours, and a fair assessment landing on the reality that Harper would not be hearing her, the organizing of this support relay began.
Dec 13 Steve Tredget (NEPA family) fasted in support before this relay began
Dec 14 Tara Beagan (NEPA)
Dec 15 Derek Garza (NEPA) and Tahani Afaneh (NEPA family)
Dec 16 Janet Antone (NEPA)
Dec 17 Jiv Parasram (Pandemic, New Harlem and Cahoots Theatre)
Dec 18 Aislinn Rose (Praxis Theatre), Richard Cliff (NEPA family) and Kenneth Williams (playwright)
Dec 19 Keith Barker (NEPA)
Dec 20 Rae Powell (NEPA) and Brooklyn Doran (NEPA family)
Dec 21 Winter Solstice, Andy Moro (NEPA family) and Troy Emery Twigg (Centre for Indigenous Theatre), Michelle Latimer (NEPA family, filmmaker)
Dec 22 PJ Prudat (NEPA family), Eli Ham (NEPA family) and Leah Simms-Karp (NEPA)
Dec 23 Rupal Shah (Nightswimming and Obsidian Theatre, NEPA member), Anita Majumdar (actor/playwright), Christopher Ross (NEPA family)
Dec 24 Deb Courchene (NEPA), Ashley Bomberry (NEPA family), Jiv Parasram again.
Dec 25 James Cade (NEPA family), Marjorie Chan (playwright)
Dec 26 Cole Alvis (NEPA), Luke Larocque, Jordan Tannahill (Suburban Beast)
Dec 27 Michael Wheeler (Praxis Theatre), Ruth Madoc-Jones (NEPA family and SummerWorks), Marilo Nunez (Alameda Theatre), Naomi Skwarna (Suburban Beast)
Dec 28 Brooklyn Doran, again (NEPA family), Aislinn Rose, again (Praxis Theatre) Sasha Kovacs, Marion de Vries (Centre for Indigenous Theatre)
Dec 29 Laura Nanni (Buddies in Bad Times Theatre), Christine Rambukkana
Dec 30 Michael Rubenfeld (SummerWorks), Lisa C Ravensbergen (NEPA family)
Dec 31 Colin Doyle (actor) and Darla Contois (CIT)
“…sometimes
‘Tis well to be bereft of promis’d good,
That we may lift the soul, and contemplate
With lively joy the joys we cannot share.”
-Samuel Taylor Colridge, This Lime Tree Bower My Prison
Sound:
Image:
Anthony MacMahon is a playwright and actor from Saskatoon, recently relocated to Toronto. His short play, Eglington, will be a part of the Alumnae Theatre New Ideas Festival.
He appears in the Cart/Horse Theatre Toronto premiere of THIS LIME TREE BOWER by Conor McPherson. Playing until Dec. 22 at The Berkeley Theatre Upstairs @ 26 Berkeley St.
Civil Debates is a monthly series that invites two speakers from opposite sides of an argument to debate their perspectives for a liveaudience. It is also a forum for all attendees to participate and vote on who and what they agree with.
We hope this will be an opportunity to extend the online community we have developed over the years in a face-to-face setting, bringing those conversations into a physical space. We’re enthused by the intelligent and civil discourse that has developed on praxistheatre.com, particularly in the commentsofpostsabouthot buttonissues.
This got us thinking – ‘Hey – as a theatre company, shouldn’t we doing this live in a space with human bodies?’
Debate Questions
The topics for the initial four debates will be curated via a gallery installation January 12 and 13 at The Next Stage Festival at Factory Theatre.
A dual system will be used in facilitating participation: Both sticky notes and a laptop will be available to post issues and ideas that people believe would benefit from more debate. These can be posted to topics like: Theatre, Politics, The City, and Whatever. There will also be the opportunity to suggest who you think would be a great debater.
The goal is to emerge with four questions that will inspire compelling debaters to participate in an event that has genuine community interest.
Debate Format
Debates will take place monthly at The Theatre Centre at 1095 Queen St. W (Queen and Dovercourt) in February, March, April and May 2013.
Debate format will be based on the Canadian Parliamentary model with two speakers for either side. Just like the best acting, each debater should have a responsibility to hear the arguments that come before them and respond – not just deliver a prepared statement.
Each debate will have a moderator whose job will be to ensure debaters obey the general rules as well as the speaking format. The formal debate will last around 40 minutes.
At the end of the debate, the floor will be opened to other participants, each of whom can speak for a period of two minutes. All participants, speaking and non, will be provided the opportunity to register their vote on the topic at the conclusion of the evening. These results will be posted back here on praxistheatre.com where further debate and conversation, as always, is encouraged.
Join the Debate
If you are interested in being a debater or moderator, drop us a line via info@praxistheatre.com.Tell us why critical, respectful debate is important in 150 words or less.
Hope to see you in the tent during the final weekend of The Next Stage Festival. This series begins when we get our topics from you.
RaBIT is a grassroots initiative to change the way we vote in Toronto municipal elections to a ranked ballot.
Over the past five years, many places have switched to ranked balloting including San Francisco, Minneapolis, Memphis, Oakland and The Academy Awards. There are a number of benefits to this system, but two of the biggies are it ensures majority support and encourages a more positive political environment.
Viewed in this context, RaBIT is proposing a transformative adjustment to what politics is in Toronto. Gone would be talk of pushing lower profile candidates out of races to eliminate vote splitting, candidates would be respectful to opponents whose support they may need, and extreme candidates would have to convince a majority of voters their extreme ideas are attractive to win.
In the current first-past-the-post format that defines our voting system, none of this is possible. Divisional and oppositional wedge politics are the most effective route to power. Candidates are routinely elected with a majority of electors casting their ballots for other candidates who wanted different policies from the ones they support. I can understand how this ethos alienates a huge swath of people from engaging with politics.
So I’m going to the meeting this Monday to learn how to volunteer. There are a lot of problems in Toronto and issues I would like to put my energy into, but you have to pick your battles and this one seems like it could have some far-reaching consequences for many future administrations. The RaBIT team has done a great job to get this issue on the public agenda and taken seriously by city councillors and themedia. Now is the time to push for this – and there is no substitute for a well-organized group of passionate citizens. As of publication there were already 90 confirmed attendees on the Facebook.
Throughout today and tomorrow Toronto City Council’s Budget Committee is hearing deputations from the community about what various citizens and organizations would like to see in the next budget. Again this year, a number of arts organizations and individuals will be making the case to increase arts funding to a previously promised $25 per capita.
The above video was created by BeautifulCity.ca, an alliance made up of over 60 arts organizations. It provides an excellent recap of their work to create a tax on billboards that would in turn provide the funding necessary for Council to follow through on their repeated commitments to increase that funding: the Capital Gains Report (passed 2011), Strategies for Arts and Culture Funding (2010), and Cultural Plan for a Creative City (2003.)
Praxis has written extensively in the past about BeautifulCity.ca and their activities, as well as the various public consultations that helped create documents like the Capital Gains Report, and we’ve live tweeted from a number of public events on this topic.
There are many things you can do to show your support for this initiative to create an arts-friendly budget in 2013. Click here for more information on BeautifulCity.ca about attending & supporting the deputations, the Artists Jam Session & Town Hall in January, or how to contact the Budget Committee members directly.
Check out the document below if you’d like more information on the billboard tax, and what exactly BeautifulCity.ca is asking of the Budget Committee for 2013.
(l-r) Adam Wilson, Ava Jane Markus and Maev Beaty are directed by Mitchell Cushman in the SummerWorks darling turned Mirvish hit Terminus
by Michael Wheeler
I haven’t seen Terminus yet – going with my Mom next week. I don’t want that to stop me from writing about it here though, as we don’t do reviews in this space in any case.
It bears mentioning though that local indie theatre has created a genuine artistic and commercial hit, and that this comes in the form of Terminus. The production is the first show in a pretty big risk Mirvish is taking with their new indie-focused, Off-Mirvish season.
One of our most read and commented discussions this year was, Mirvish Blows Up Downtown Theatre in which I argued that A) A Mirvish interest in regularly and commercially producing the work of indie artists could be significant in an awesome way and B) the Mirvish re-development on King St had the potential to bring a net benefit to Torontonians and theatregoers if it included a smaller venue than the Princess of Wales, which will be demolished.
Since that post, The Off-Mirvish season has probably gone even better than anyone at Mirvish or their indie partner Outside The March could have imagined. It has receivedstunningreviews, social media buzz is at a fevered pitch and shows are selling out. Hope you don’t want to go this weekend Friday – as tickets are not available.
Anyone who has paid a casual interest in our industry knows it has been tough times as of late. Theatres are closing, deficits have been posted, boards are overstepping their mandate – questions of relevancy abound. To see a potential upswing, a positive sign that artist-driven independent work is viable and can excite not just our own community, but the city at large, is worth noting. Not only can this thing get turned around, we’re the ones who can do it.
Certainly there is value in much of the other work our community creates that is not commercially focused. God knows I wouldn’t be running this company with Aislinn and making this work if I didn’t think so, but what gives theatre its intrinsic value isn’t really what is at stake here. Theatre will always exist and address core questions of humanity as long as humans can get together somewhere. What’s at stake here is establishing a viable sustainable professionalized urban theatre industry.
If you remove the artists who work at our major non-urban festivals, that is something we don’t have in Toronto currently. Those artists that do work regularly here almost all have secondary focuses. By creating a regular link between independently produced and created work and commercial theatre, Mirvish threatens to redefine this paradigm. Not because we will work on Mirvish shows, but because it has the potential to reignite interest from audiences and other producers in what we do.
So hats off to Outside The March Artistic Director and recent Praxis blog writer Mitchell Cushman. We all really needed this to go well coming out of the gate, and you are passing off the baton with an early lead.
This Onion Talk reveals some of the aspects we won’t be looking at in the workshop.
by Michael Wheeler,
Next week I am leading a workshop with Theatre Ontario on online tools and how they can complement and integrate with live performance. It is designed to be useful to staff at arts organizations as well as artists interested in these ideas and concepts . You know how they say spots are limited and filling up fast? This is also true in this instance.
Looking at examples from work with The Electric Company, Volcano Theatre, The Shaw Festival, The Theatre Centre, Praxis Theatre and The Wrecking Ball, this workshop investigates imaginative expression and best practices in performing arts and online integration.
Praxis Workshop @ Social Media Week 2012
Questions the workshop poses:
Where does your social media content come from?
What ‘voice’ should you use to represent your work or organization online?
What’s the latest with live-blogging and live-tweeting?
How can online tools and presence assist instead of distract from the work?
Participants will emerge with:
A better idea of your relationship to social media
A clearer idea of what approach to social media is right for you.
Information to inform your social media strategy.
Ideas for social media content and where to look for/create them.
A better understanding of trends and developments.
HASHTAG: #THEATREON WHERE: 215 Spadina Avenue, Suite 210. Toronto WHEN: Tuesday November 27, 6:30pm to 8:30pm RSVP:Theatre Ontario Registration
Pam Patel, Michael Spence, Madeleine Donohue, Joel Benson & Ciara Adams in The Sacrifice Zone
Theatre Gargantua Artistic Intern and emerging artist Meara Tubman-Broeren interviews one of our favourite Toronto artists Ciara Adams about her work on The Sacrifice Zone and her long history with the company as a creator and collaborator.
MEARA: First I wanted to ask about your history with Gargantua, because you have a long history with the company, and I wondered if you wanted to speak to that experience, and how you got involved with them?
CIARA: I first started working with Theatre Gargantua in 2003. I had a friend who was one of the founding members of the company, her name’s Erica Buss, she had originated one of the parts in Raging Dreams and they were remounting the show. She told me I should audition, so I did, and ended up taking on the role she had originated. After we finished that remount the company started the e-DENTITY cycle, I was an associate artist with the company throughout that entire cycle, from the very first day until we finished the show at the Royal Alex. I stayed on for the first version of Fibber, then things got really busy with my music and bluemouth as we were creating Dance Marathon. It’s been great to be working with Theatre Gargantua again on The Sacrifice Zone.
MEARA: You work and devise theatre with other companies as well, in particular bluemouth, so I’m curious about your personal creation process and how that feeds into the Gargantua process.
CIARA: We are in the middle of a new development process with bluemouth, and it has highlighted the differences in a Theatre Gargantua process and a bluemouth process: it’s really illustrated to me that bluemouth is really not a theatre company, we’re a performance collective (if there ever was any doubt). Theatre Gargantua’s work, though highly collaborative, original and devised, lives much more in the world of theatre, and structurally speaking, it’s more traditional in so much as there’s a director, a script, and you’re working as an actor, be it a multitasking interdisciplinary actor! Whereas in bluemouth we don’t work with a director, we create collectively, sometimes I need to be more of an actor, sometimes a musician, at others a dancer, and we all act as the “outside eye”, so yes, very different worlds. It’s really interesting being involved with both companies because aesthetically speaking, they’re quite different, and as a performer and creator it’s my job to shift to the current situation and context.
MEARA: So part of the creation process for the show was sharing personal stories and experiences around the issue of justice, and one of the stories that became a big influence on this piece was your experience teaching in Fort McMurray.
CIARA: I was thinking about it last night, and one of the things I think is really great about The Sacrifice Zone is that it’s not set in any one place, it could be the coal mines in Wales, it could be Australia, Canada, nearly every country has some kind of mining or extraction industry or history of such. It was by chance that I just returned from my second trip to Fort McMurray when we did the first development of The Sacrifice Zone in June. I go there as a teacher with the Royal Conservatory of Music Schools program Learning Through the Arts. It’s a somewhat surreal place, and even though it’s the oil sands, and there are all these politics associated with it, it’s also a community like any other. These kinds of communities exist all over the world, where the local industry, and therefore economy is so closely linked to day to day life. Fort McMurray has its challenges for sure, being able to go there and bring the arts to that community feels important to me because that’s how we all tell our stories and understand who we are.
MEARA: I’m curious about how, since your formal training was in voice and acting, you ended up in the world of more physical work and collective devised work.
Ciara in motion with Michael Spence
CIARA: I did start as a music major it’s true, but by the time I got to the end of my undergrad, what interested me had shifted and I was really inspired by new forms of contemporary postmodern theatre that were emerging. So when I went over to the UK, I knew that I wanted a classically based training, but I was also really interested in devised theatre and contemporary work. I chose the Guildhall School of Music and Drama specifically because they had embraced devised theatre practice and there was lots of movement and voice training. I had studied dance growing up, done gymnastics, and been an althlete, so it just sort of followed on from there. I do love the fact that I knew exactly the kinds of companies I wanted to be working with, when I moved back to Canada, I was able to find them. There’s a great story actually, when I still lived in the UK I met an actress who was coming to Canada to work on a new show, when she described the company that she would be working with and I thought “my god that sounds amazing, that’s exactly the kind of company I want to work with if I ever move back to Canada”, flash forward a couple years, that conversation long forgotten, when I discovered she had been working with Theatre Gargantua.
MEARA: That’s amazing! Something that’s interesting about this show is that we started with quite a naturalistic text, with quite a lot of text, and the process has been a lot about finding the physical undercurrent of that text and how the text becomes physical. As a performer, how do you navigate that dual thing that’s going on, shifting between the physicality and the text?
CIARA: This process has been very interesting because it has been different from my other Theatre Gargantua experiences. I am sure if you asked Jacquie, the director, she would agree, that it has been quite different from the norm. We did a lot of table talk and reading through the script at the beginning, and Suzie Miller, the playwright, was doing an incredible amount of rewriting based on our daily rehearsals, which I think was quite useful for us as actors because it gave us a real understanding of the characters through that process. Now it’s gotten to the point where slowly we’re coordinating the physical life with the script itself. Now it’s getting to the point where we are able to marry the emotion with the physical. Sometimes that can be tricky because you’re not just having to think about how you’re feeling while acting, you’re having to think about how you’re feeling as you interact, fall to the ground, and roll while saying your lines. But I have always loved that challenge, which is why I do find it really satisfying working with Theatre Gargantua.
MEARA: Would you like to talk about what you have coming up next after this?
CIARA: I would love to talk about that! After this, I’m very excited that bluemouth is undertaking our second phase of development for our new piece which is called Stay (a) Wake: A Field Guide for Strip Poker, it’s a working title, but people seem to like it. We have a residency for our second development phase at Hub 14 in Toronto in December and bluemouth is also throwing a “Happy Hour” Fundraiser at Musideum on Thursday, December 13th from 5.30-7.30pm. Come on out and support us! Musideum is an incredible space located inside the 401 Richmond Street building at Richmond and Spadina. We will share some of our past work, and some new work too. Apart from that we have a few more presentations of DANCE MARATHON lined up for 2013, including the National Arts Centre in June as part of the Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa.
Meara Tubman-Broeren & Ciara Adams on set
There are 2 public performances of Theatre Gargantua’s The Sacrifice Zone coming up this Friday and Saturday at 8pm in Factory Theatre’s Studio. The piece is Associate Produced by Praxis’ own Artistic Producer Aislinn Rose. Tickets are available here.
Ciara Adams has been co-artistic director of interdisciplinary collective bluemouth inc. since 2009; she has worked with the collective since 2003. An associate artist since 2003 Ciara has developed and performed in four of Theatre Gargantua’s cycles. Ciara is also a musician who has released two albums to date. She teaches voice from her home studio in Toronto, and she is a mentor artist educator with the Royal Conservatory of Music’s LTTA program. www.ciaraadams.ca
Meara Tubman-Broeren is an emerging creator, director, and producer of new work. As well as her Artistic Internship with Theatre Gargantua, she is currently the Administration and Documentation Intern for the Rhubarb Festival 2013. Upcoming she is producing The Seagull in Four Movements, a contemporary adaption of Chekhov’s The Seagull set and performed in a Toronto bar, as well as developing and directing a new work for the Paprika Festival’s Olde Spice program.
Theatre Gargantua’s Internship Program is designed to provide an opportunity for emerging artists to expand their skills and experience through observing and participating in Theatre Gargantua’s creation cycle. Interns participate in all rehearsals and creative meetings, while simultaneously assisting in areas of production and administration. This program allows interns to develop new skills useful in future artistic and producing endeavors.
Last month my boyfriend William and I signed a one year lease on an old barbershop in Kensington Market, spent three weeks in our long johns scrubbing the walls and floors of hair, painting it, installing lights, and launched a storefront performance space called Videofag. It is our home and the first one we have shared together. But it also one we want to share with Toronto’s cultural community because we believe we can offer something vital to our peers – space. From Le Chat Noir and Gertrude Stein’s rue de Fleurus salons in Paris, to Warhol’s Factory and the Chealsea Hotel in New York City, to VideoCaberet, A Space Gallery, and Rochdale College in Toronto, space for experimentation and discourse has been critical to the development and evolution of artistic peer groups and cultural movements for generations.
I believe Toronto theatre has suffered from a deficit of truly independent, radical space over the past decade. While many young theatre artists, including myself, have benefitted greatly from development programs run by established theatres we are in danger of becoming an overly institutionalized generation of artists. A generation who places value on recognition from the establishment, tentative to seek opportunities for ourselves outside the support of pillared companies and festivals, with selection committees, boards of directors, operational funding, and other structural hierarchies. The theatrical institutions of today were iconoclastic spaces carved from the cultural landscape in the 60s and 70s with a sense of urgency and purpose. As crucial as they remain in our ecology, they are now the establishment – with corresponding programming and financial obligations – and are limited in their capacity to represent the needs and identities of the emerging zeitgeist.
Our generation cannot afford to exist perpetually in the demi-world of workshops and staged readings. Rather than striving for recognition based on a value system prescribed by the establishment, we need to stake out new territory for ourselves. Instead of standing by to inherit old institutions, or to be programmed by them, we should be actively making new space for ourselves, on our own terms and for our own needs.
There is a crisis of space in Toronto – a lack of affordable venues founded and operated by our young peers where year-round access to dialogue, experimentation, creation, and presentation is possible. A space outside the world of the four-hour tech call, the commercialized, review-centric, festival environment, or developmental programs of larger institutions who lack the ability to produce most of what is seeded within them. What is needed is an accessible, year-round space for emerging creators where ideas have the proper time and context to gestate, be torn apart, and reformed. Where the very nature of why we make performance, and what our generation wants out of performance, can be questioned and defined for ourselves. A space that costs nothing upfront to use – affording us more time in the theatre and less time at our day jobs (and mitigating the financial risk in creative risk-taking).
Videofag is @ 187 Augusta Ave in Kensington Market across from the park.
There are many inspiring models for peer-based collaboration in our own theatrical history – the founding of Theatre Passe Muraille in 1969, Factory Theatre in 1970, and the coming together of six independent companies in 1979 to create the B.A.A.N.N. Theatre Centre – and more recent examples, including Hub 14, Unit 102, Toronto Free Gallery, and companies like Native Earth Performing Arts and fu-Gen forging a home for themselves at Daniel’s Spectrum. Furthermore, many informal spaces like family rooms and kitchens have played critical roles in the evolution of Toronto theatre over the years. So there are many working models, historic and present, from which to draw inspiration – without, of course, fashioning replicas of existing institutions.
A few weeks back over coffee, Brendan Healy conveyed his support of Videofag and our hope to present risk-taking and transgressive work there – Buddies was founded on this ethos and continues to embody it to this day. I left the conversation, though, with the understanding that spaces like Videofag shouldn’t attempt to emulate even the most groundbreaking of institutions, but rather embrace their DIY nature and understand how they are specially positioned to present different kinds of work. This is not to say that we shouldn’t pursue opportunities to produce our work on established mainstages, but rather we should not wait to make work solely in these conditions. We should look at our independence as an asset – a freedom from commitments and expectations – to radically explore and innovate on our own terms. I suspect many of the exciting projects of our time will be pieces we create in the spaces and contexts of our own making.
With Videofag William and I want to bring together boundary-pushing artists, academics, curators, and shit-distrubers operating within a wide range of mediums and socio-political communities to form an atelier where new ideas can be explored and worked on over a timeframe tailored to each project. And it will succeed not because of anything William and I do but because a community of creators have already begun to invest emotionally and artistically in it, and are in the process of making it their own. Ultimately, it is the kind of space that I want to create work in. The kind of space I desire as an artist. The kind of space that inevitably will evolve to the point where it no longer fulfills the needs of the next generation and will, in time, be replaced itself.
Videofag is a storefront cinema and performance space in Kensington Market. While one of our primary focuses is supporting new queer voices in the city, we want to nurture transgressive work from shit disturbers of various ages, orientations, cultural backgrounds, and creative mediums. Ultimately, we are interested in creating an inclusive space for risk taking and discourse. www.videofag.com
Jordan Tannahill is a Toronto-based playwright, theatre director, and filmmaker who runs Suburban Beast, a performance company. He launched Videofag with his partner, actor William Christopher Ellis, in October of this year. For more information, or to propose a project to Videofag, feel free to email Jordan at jordan@videofag.com.
Yesterday, Bill C-427 came up for second reading in Parliament. A private member’s bill proposed by the NDP’s Tyrone Benskin (previous Artistic Director of Montreal’s Black Theatre Workshop), Bill C-427 was an Act to amend the Income Tax Act to allow income averaging for artists.
The tax codes in Britain, Germany, The Netherlands and France have all made similar adjustments to encourage cultural production by independent producers. Corporate tax rates has been lowered by one third (22% to 15%) since Harper took power. Certainly cultural tax rates could be amended to reflect a level playing field. Unfortunately the Conservative Government couldn’t appreciate the value of a tax code that allowed entrepreneurs in cultural industries to be taxed at competitive rates with international trading partners and competitors.
Due to the irregular hours and inconsistent incomes frequently associated with their work, artists are nearly always disadvantaged both by punitively high taxation during years of high earning and by virtue of their ineligibility for a number of Federal programs such as Employment Insurance (EI), the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and others. C-427 will begin to level the playing field by allowing them to average their income over an elective period, achieving considerable tax savings over two to five years.
The critique of the Bill was presented in a recent Globe and Mail op-ed by Kevin Milligan, which levels three charges against income averaging: 1) Last time we tried it was complicated. 2) Last time there were more tax brackets. 3) Last time tax rates were higher.
These reasons not to act to support Canadian culture through a fair tax structure, frankly, are awful. They can be summarized by two statements: “Why do you guys want to make everything so complicated?” and “Come on guys, it’s not so bad.” None of these standards are applied to corporate interests in the myriad of ways they have been accommodated and caressed by the government. They are not particularly compelling as arguments go either: Even meagre savings, when you are living on the poverty-level income of many artists, would be significant.
Heritage Minister spoke and voted against C-427
When the Minister was asked if he would support the bill for Second Reading yesterday, he said he would not. Moore listed new museums, programs and a recent visit by members of The Canadian Arts Coalition as signs the government was doing a great job with culture. He did not address at any time the financial realities of being an artist or the particulars of the bill, preferring to recite the institutionally-based initiatives he controls the funding for. He did not address why the government won’t support a tax system that allows our cultural workers to compete on a level playing field.
If the Harper Government doesn’t want to work to support culture and the economic paradigm that defines it, that’s cool. We kind of knew it all along. Let’s not pretend this was a decision made out of anything but partisan interest however. This bill would have made a major impact on the viability of being an artist in Canada. It begs the question whether culture not tied to The War of 1812, or the major institutions it controls, is something this government wants to encourage.
“After the years and years of weaker and waterier imitations, we now find ourselves rejecting the very notion of a holy stage. It is not the fault of the holy that it has become a middle-class weapon to keep the children good.”
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