Olivia Chow - NDP

1) Will your party commit to upholding the November 2005 federal commitment to a $342 million increase to arts funding over three years?

New Democrats understand that Canada has an amazing array of artists, theatre groups, galleries, and museums. Their contribution to our identity is just as essential as our roads and other infrastructure. As such, they deserve better support and funding.

The NDP will ensure that the government follows through on November's Canada Council funding announcement.

2) Given the positive affect of arts programming on many aspects of Toronto's daily life including community volunteerism, youth engagement, economic development, employment, tourism and overall quality of life, conjoined with the fact that Toronto's artists fall in the top 25% of education levels and the bottom 25% of income levels, can you offer any concrete commitment from your party that will improve the environment for the City's artists.

We need to make certain that the Council's funding for art and artists remains stable and accessible. Canada needs to better support this creativity so that those in the arts don't have to split their creative energy between raising money and pursuing their craft, and New Democrats are committed to helping them.

Many writers, visual artists, actors, set designers and directors work in a several fields, including television. One of Canada's main centres for television production is based here in Toronto. We will continue to fight for the development of arts and culture policies that nurture this sector as a vital economic engine for Canada, our cities and communities.

Canadian content requirements for all broadcasters were originally introduced as an effort to develop Canadian TV production capacity, and to stem the overwhelming dominance of prime time TV by American programming. The changes in 1999 which redefined the content requirements for prime-time created an influx of US content, and caused a serious decline in Canadian drama production.

The NDP thinks a review of these changes is long overdue. We agree that the CRTC should be directed to review the 1999 television policy for the exhibition of priority programming in prime time and set firm content and spending requirements for broadcasters.

Please be sure to visit http://www.ndp.ca when our platform is released in the coming days. Details of our arts policy will be found in the platform.

Judy MacDonald
For the Olivia Chow Campaign