Conservative Party

David Watters

No response to date

Green Party

Mark Viitala

No response to date

Liberal Party

Tony Ianno, M.P.

NDP Party

Olivia Chow

1. What role do the arts play in your life?
For over twenty years, I have worked as sculptor and print maker. The focus of my post-secondary education was the fine arts. I did a Fine Arts degree at the University of Guelph and studied at the Ontario College of Art and Design

2. What role do the arts play in keeping people healthy?
Our communities are always stronger when the arts are an integral party of healthy people. In the 1990s, I worked with the Kensington Youth Theatre Employment project. This project works with homeless and street affected youth to give the participants unique employment skills that also enable them to explore their identities. Since 1998, I have consistently lobbied the Community and Social Services Committee to protect and promote arts grants for projects like KYTES.

3. Why is it important that Toronto have a healthy arts sector?
The Canadian arts sector, from publishing to film production generates almost 3 billion dollars of economic activity in Canada annually. The majority of that occurs in Toronto, with film productions, publishing houses and music recording happening in our city. This level of activity means that more people are working and we all enjoy a more vibrant and diverse city. It is critical to encourage artistic production at all levels in order create healthy and stable economic growth in Toronto

4. Does your party believe that Canadian content and ownership should be protected in our broadcasting industry?
The NDP is fully committed to encouraging a diversity of Canadian voices in Canadian television. The NDP wants to protect domestic ownership of cable and telecommunications companies. More importantly, the NDP wants to ensure diversity of voices in the media by preventing further mergers and acquisitions that provide media owners with more than 20% market share in the national or any local market. It’s time to encourage Canadian producers, smaller entrepreneurs and artists to express themselves.

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?
Currently, the Liberals are opposed to the idea of letting artists pay into and benefit from Employment Insurance. The NDP wants to provide more project based grants and tax credits to support artists in their work and in times when they do not have work. It is key to allow artists who contribute to the economic well-being of Canada and of Toronto to be able to benefit from Employment Insurance and Canada Pension Plan benefits.

6. Do you support federal investment in Canada’s arts sector?
The NDP fully supports an increase in funding the arts. We want to see an increase and stabilized, multi-year funding for the CBC and SRC. It is time to recognize the importance of public broadcasting in a large country like Canada. It is also time to support the National Arts Centre, Canadian Opera Company, and the various other theatre, ballet, and orchestras around the country. Without increasing grants for these smaller groups we risk losing our voice in an increasingly globalized world.

a. Does investment in the arts produce a health dividend? An educational dividend? A public safety dividend?
Through my work with St. Stephen’s Community Services and KYTES, I know that money invested in youth involvement in the arts enables them to increase their employable and educational skills. Young people who have the arts in their lives, from school board supported music programs to groups that receive grants from the City of Toronto, are more likely to be involved in building rather than feeling isolated from our community.

b. If elected, would you vote to increase funding to the arts sector through The Canada Council? Through Department of Canadian Heritage?
The Canada Council, Canadian Heritage and the Performance and Arts Grants from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council are critical to supporting the arts. I will vote to increase funding for all of these agencies, just as I have always voted for more money for community arts grants and Toronto Culture.

c. Do you support provision of stable, adequate, multi-year arts funding?
Through adequately funding the CBC and SRC, along with an increase in the grant money to the cultural agencies of the federal and municipal governments, I believe that the we can ensure that Canadian producers and creators can be enabled to make their voices heard not only in Canada but also across the world.

Progressive Canadian Party

Asif Hossain

asif.hossain@utoronto.ca
www.asifhossain.com
416-725-3630

1. What role do the arts play in your life?
My mother was a painter in her youth back in Bangladesh. She instilled in me an appreciation for visual arts. I myself pursued this talent at a young age but soon found interest in other subjects, particularly politics.

2. What role do the arts play in keeping people healthy?
There seems to be a great deal of mounting evidence that points to the importance of arts and humanities playing a greater role in healthcare. As more politicians are forced to think outside the box to fix Canada’s healthcare woes, I believe the arts will play a greater role in improving the health of Canadians before long.

3. Why is it important that Toronto have a healthy arts sector?
In order to keep the city healthy and vibrant, our arts sector must be allowed to flourish. Not only for the sake of individuals and their own health, our collective economic well being as a society suffers when the arts are muted. The film industry in Toronto is still struggling and there have been little initiatives promised by any of the established candidates in Trinity-Spadina to do something about it. Ottawa needs to take direct action to attract more business in this sector and I will be that voice in Parliament for my constituency.

4. Does your party believe that Canadian content and ownership should be protected in our broadcasting industry?
The Progressive Conservative Party created the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) to give all Canadians a national voice in the media. Although the old PC Party of Canada is no more, Red Tories such as I and others have started the new PC (Progressive Canadian) Party out of the ashes of the merger with the Canadian Alliance. As a Parliamentarian, a patriot of progressive-conservative values and an ardent supporter of Canadian content I, and my party will do all it can to defend our film and broadcasting industries. Greater funding to ambitious and talented Canadians would allow them to compete more freely and give them a chance to make their impression on the Canadian and international scene.

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?
Contribution and performance based funding must be available to artists who truly help make our society a better place to live. In order to keep funding simple, transparent and performance based, the federal government must introduce more community based projects that allow artists to take advantage of federal contracts.

6. Do you support federal investment in Canada’s arts sector?
a. Does investment in the arts produce a health dividend? An educational dividend? A public safety dividend?
The arts are important to all Canadians who value a just society. Whether Canadians are aware or not, the arts are integral and the federal government should do all it can within reasonable limits to support arts ventures.

b. If elected, would you vote to increase funding to the arts sector through The Canada Council?
I would vote to increase funding to any sector that I feel add value to the Canadian experience. The arts are certainly on that list.

c. Through Department of Canadian Heritage? Do you support provision of stable, adequate, multi-year arts funding?
Our artists must be provided with regular support. In order to do this, the federal government must continue to fund community based initiatives to keep the most creative Canadians working and our country prosperous. Stability can be reached by funding projects that create opportunities. Increased employment insurance would give ammunition to those who dismiss artists as lazy and unproductive. Increased funding to programs would create more jobs for artists, which would refute the claims of those who do not support the arts sector. We must facilitate opportunity, not handouts.