Conservative Party

Megan Harris

1. What role do the arts play in your life?

As a long time resident of Toronto I have come to truly appreciate the vast arts and cultural opportunities that the city has to offer. Whether it's enjoying the jazz festival, film festival or our world-renowned museums and theatres, Toronto's arts community is thriving.

2. What role do the arts play in keeping people healthy?

Art challenges convention, provides our community with a forum for expression and provides Canadians with an opportunity to celebrate our diverse cultures. It creates a forum for the discussion of ideas and helps to support the development of our minds and communities.

3. Why is it important that Toronto have a healthy arts sector?

Toronto is our country's most diverse city. It is Canada's largest city, economic engine and a destination for millions of tourists each year. It is critical that we continue to celebrate our artistic and cultural communities on a world scale. Providing them with the opportunity and resources for showing their talents brings international recognition to Toronto and an opportunity to celebrate our diverse cultures.

4. Does your party believe that Canadian content and ownership should be protected in our broadcasting industry?

We believe that Canadian creators should be able to reach an expanded international audience in broadcasting.

5. Our artists help make our society prosperous, yet many of them work and live in relative poverty. How can the Federal Government assist in returning some of that prosperity to our artists?

We will create an economic climate in which Canadians can thrive and prosper, and create quality job opportunities. We will provide deep, broad-based tax relief, introduce immediate and long-term tax relief, focusing on personal income tax. This tax relief is essential for economic growth and international competitiveness. We will invest in infrastructure by transferring at least 3 cents of the gas tax to the provinces. This will enable the provinces and municipalities to access more resources to help support and promote the arts in our communities.

6. Do you support federal investment in Canada's arts sector?

I feel that it is important that our federal government maintain a role in the funding and development of Canada's arts community. We need to ensure that funding is stable and representative of the arts community and its priorities. The federal government needs to preserve and celebrate Canada's
natural and historical heritage for the benefit and enjoyment of all.

Green Party

Gabriel Draven

1. What role do the arts play in your life?
I admit that the arts do not play an active enough role in my life. This is not out of choice but out of consideration to time. That said, I do spend a lot of time listening to music, seeing movies, listening to the CBC (yeah!!) and, when I can, seeing local talent at bars and comedy shows. Some of the comedians in this city just rock. In fact, 2 of them came out and did a fundraiser for my campaign several weeks ago. They were all awesome. Oh yeah, I read quite a bit too. I’m currently reading the Edith Grossman translation of Don Quixote. It’s absolutely breathtaking to think that Cervantes wrote this thing in the 1500’s. It’s timeless. Kind of like American Idol (that’s sarcasm).

2. What role do the arts play in keeping people healthy?
Arthur Miller said that after the guns have finished firing and the victories of finance are forgotten, it will be the artists who pick up the pieces, return sanity to society and confront future generations. Question: do people remember the merchants and financiers of the Renaissance or the artists? The arts play a critical role in society.

3 Why is it important that Toronto have a healthy arts sector?
I think one of the things that makes Toronto such an amazing city is the vibrancy of its culture scene. We can turn to people like Richard Florida who has written extensively on the role that diversity and creativity play in fueling the ‘creative economy’. I don’t want to sound like some business MBA mercenary (which I am actually), but there is a huge financial benefit to having a strong arts community.

4. Does your party believe that Canadian content and ownership should be protected in our broadcasting industry?
Here’s a summary of the Green Party’s culture platform and policies:
• provide stable funding for the CBC to provide quality programming in both languages.
• enact a Royal Commission to create a set of principles and policies to develop an independent, diverse and competitive Canadian media industry.
• direct the CRTC to reserve more bandwidth for indi and not for profit stations.
• create funding for Canadian educational programming.
• sponsor regional festivals which would bring Canadian art to the global community.
• support for long term, stable funding for the arts in communities to build facilities and to encourage participation.

5. Our artists help make our society prosperous, yet many of them work and live in relative poverty. How can the Federal Government assist in returning some of that prosperity to our artists?
I realize artists live in both obscurity and poverty. I would be open to listening to your plan for how to address this as I am afraid I don’t have many concrete suggestions at the time. Certainly there is a funding component to the answer so I would like to know more about your thoughts.

6. Do you support federal investment in Canada’s arts sector?
• Does investment in the arts produce a health dividend? An educational dividend? A public safety dividend?
• If elected, would you vote to increase funding to the arts sector through The Canada Council? Through Department of Canadian Heritage?
• Do you support provision of stable, adequate, multi-year arts funding?
Take a look at the answers to question 4 above.

Liberal Party

Bill Graham, M.P.

NDP Party

Michael Shapcott

click here for response from NDP Head Office

Canadian Action Party

Kevin D. Peck

kpeck@canadianactionparty.ca
www.KevinDPeck.ca
416-535-0221

1. What role do the arts play in your life?
The arts have played a fundamental role in my personal human development. Literature, cinema, photography, painting, sculpture, music, dance, and theatre have all given me an ability to empathize and connect with the conscious and unconscious perspectives and emotions of others in my immediate community, other communities, and certainly communities of other generations.
I've received so much from the arts that I'm obliged to give back. Indeed, it gives me great pleasure to do so. It appears that I will be giving back by performing in the role of a political actor. An actor that will defend and nurture an environment where each of us can develop fully and share with each other in a manner that humans are want to do.
2. What role do the arts play in keeping people healthy?
The role they play is a complicated one that is beyond definition or categorization. It is something you live rather then study. Nonetheless, I can certainly recognize a community that does not have a significant social and artistic component to it. It would give me great pleasure and satisfaction to know that I've done well by enabling these communities in need to come alive as a result of my work in parliament.

3. Why is it important that Toronto have a healthy arts sector?
May I expand the question? It is important for EVERY community to have a healthy "arts sector." (I don't like the use of "sector" when talking about arts.) People need time and space in order to communicate with one another by the exercising and/or development of their skills in their daily lives. Art is, in many ways, play and introspection upon what we do and experience. It is important that every community and its members have the opportunity to act out these needs. It is apart of how we eat, how we court one another, how, what, and whom we trade with, and how we work.

4. Does your party believe that Canadian content and ownership should be protected in our broadcasting industry?
Yes! And I'm very pleased to say this, it is one of our primary platform items and extends to publishing, newspapers, public broadcasters, and private broadcasters. (Flyer of platform available at: http://www.canadianactionparty.ca/Downloads/2004-Flyer-27.pd

5. Our artists help make our society prosperous, yet many of them work and live in relative poverty. How can the Federal Government assist in returning some of that prosperity to our artists?
I reject the whole premise of this question. It suggests that being an "artist" is a profession focused on money (the word 'rich' would be better). I find it nearly as offensive as considering love making a trade - - in both cases the acts can not escape the context in which they are performed. If you make a living from producing "art" you are a craftsman or an artisan but an "artist" is a title that is free to be given to anybody. Also, if I may, the notion of art as a commodity generated by "artists" implies that others are consumers of art. This notion imposes a restriction on the freedom of expression we should all feel and undermines our legitimacy to express. If people accept this viewpoint, it then emasculates them, alienates them, and suppresses them to a lower class that is considered consumptive and ignorant. I do not accept this framework and would rather encourage all people to express themselves without fear.
This is not to say that artisans and craftsmen should not be able to maintain a livelihood from the objects that they create. Now, it is a Federal Government's responsibility to maintain an economic environment were all citizens have time and their necessary basic needs met so that they can participate in as many cultural and social activities as are within their own personal natures to do. This is irrespective of whether they are an artisan, a worker, or a craftsman. The more artists there are, the better.
Finally, to the point of your question, the Federal Government can assist in nurturing artistic communication in communities by increasing the public money supply in the economy, removing monopolistic legislation that limits the freedom and profitability of farmers, creating a national urban and suburban renewal committee to focus the nation on the need to build localized quality living environments in cities and towns, and abrogate NAFTA because it currently restricts government from creating localized solutions by geographic and sociological parameters in our own country.
But, more specifically to the individuals your organization represents, I'm sure TCA and CCA members are familiar with the variety of grants given out by the NFB, Canada Council, Arts Presentation Canada, Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), Canadian Magazine Fund, dance - grant programs, and the litany of others. I am glad to see them there. It is within the spirit of our party to support these programs and we will work to see that they continue to respond to the needs of our communities across the country and in Toronto.
6. Do you support federal investment in Canada’s arts sector?
a. Does investment in the arts produce a health dividend?
b. An educational dividend?
c. A public safety dividend?
d. If elected, would you vote to increase funding to the arts sector through The Canada Council?
e. Through Department of Canadian Heritage?
f. Do you support provision of stable, adequate, multi-year arts funding?
I support government grants to communities, within the context of larger development plans, for the purpose of enabling rich cultural and artistic environments for those communities in need.
a. Art has a fundamental role to play in lives and development of people to becoming human. I do not accept the notion of the arts as returning "dividends." Art is not medicine. We don't take it because it is "good for you."
b. Ibid.
c. A socially connected and empathetic community is a healthy and responsive one that can adapt better in times of need.
d. I would like to see funding to artistic activity in communities that lack it increased where it is applicable. However, I can not say whether it would be specifically through The Canada Council at this time.
e. Ibid.
f. Certainly not as a ubiquitous policy. However, I'm sure there are communities where this would make sense for at least a few years. Administration costs would likely be lower where stable year-to-year funding is possible but the focus should always be on whether or not the funding program fulfills the long term plan of a given community.