Fund All You Want, We’ll Make More

Canada has a long history of government support for the arts. But “over the past 20 years, as activity in the arts has grown, federal funding has remained fairly stable. The result has been that the proportion of federal funding in the revenues of Canadian arts organizations has dropped by half.” It’s an uncomfortable situation – can you ever really have too much art, and even if you can, how do you decide who is worthy of support and who isn’t? Governments don’t generally like to be in the business of making value judgments, but without a serious increase in arts funding, many fear that Canada will soon have no other choice.