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Fax or email your letter to the Premier and ministers listed below, as well as to your own MLA, your local municipal politicians, business leaders and anyone else you can think of. If you can, fax is better; gov't tends to distribute hard copies and they don't print emails. Write to: Premier Gordon Campbell MLA: Hon. Colin Hansen (Min. of Finance) _____________________________________________ 1. Letter from a writer in the performing arts: Dear Minister of Finance, Colin Hansen (colin.hansen .mla@leg.bc.ca <mailto:rich.coleman.mla@leg.bc.ca> ); I am writing to protest the devastating and economically indefensible cuts to the BC Arts and culture industry in the past month, which included cuts to the BC Arts and Culture Special Endowment, the re-allocation of the BC Gaming Funding, and cuts from direct taxpayer investment. As a taxpayer, professional artist, and voter, I find these cuts unreasonable and short sighted, as the reversal of the Direct Access cuts to three year contracts proves. Here are some reasons why these cuts should be reversed: 1) The BC Arts Community is a working economy. We are often partially funded by taxpayers, but we also generate money: on every tax dollar invested in Arts and Culture in this province, it returns between $1.04 to $1.36 in revenues ( http://www.tsa.gov.bc.ca/arts_culture/library.htm). The Arts and Culture sector in BC generates 80,000 jobs and $5.2 billion annually (Ministry of Tourism Arts and Culture Service Plans). The City of Vancouver concluded that every dollar spent on arts and cultural activity by the City resulted in almost twelve dollars in economic activity (2007 Cultural Plan). Cutting funding by 80-90% will not only devastate the arts: it will also negatively affect the rest of the economy at large. At this time when jobs and tax dollars are needed, it seems completely counter-productive to cut funding to a sector that is helping to create jobs and generate tax dollars. As my elected representatives in our government, I demand that you ensure the following: Thank you to you and your staff for taking the time in reading this letter, and for all the work that you do to ensure the prosperity and growth of our province. Best regards,
__________________________________________________________ Regarding the Olympics: I am writing to strongly oppose your cuts to the arts in British Columbia. I find it unconscionable that you would go back on your promises to fund the arts from gaming money. By your actions it appears that the whole issue of the importance of the arts to our culture and our quality of life in BC seems to have escaped you entirely. I am shocked by these actions. It appears to me and so many others that only the Olympics matter to your government, a bottomless pit for our tax dollars, for a two week extravaganza. This is not acceptable or sustainable. __________________________________________________________ Letter from a writer in the visual arts: Dear Premier Campbell, Ministers Krueger and Coleman, I am writing to condemn your cuts to arts funding in British Columbia. These cuts are not only both socially and economically unwise, they represent a contradiction of the BC Liberals' own stated policies and election platform, and they constitute last-minute broken monetary promises to workers and organizations in BC. And you simply don't have the mandate to impose them upon the people of BC. Arts and culture workers in BC constitute an extremely significant employment and economic sector. Before the cuts, the arts employed well over 75,000 people in BC. The arts funds you promised - both the gaming funds and general revenue funds distributed through the BC Arts Council - supported the salaries of a very significant number of workers. These singularly underpaid yet highly productive workers contribute nearly 5 billion annually to the GDP. This contribution dwarfs the tiny subsidy you are giving the arts this year, which has already been slashed from 47 to 19 million, and will be slashed to a paltry 3.8 million next year. Meanwhile you continue to heavily subsidize other industries which show less productivity and growth. You are forcing the layoffs of some of the most productive workers in the province, in a time of recession. As Minister Krueger said in July's annual report, B.C.'s creative industries are strong economic drivers; studies by Statistics Canada have demonstrated that money spent on Arts and Culture is a smart investment. For every dollar spent on the arts, $1.36 comes back to the BC government in general revenue; probably much more when you take into account culture's contribution to other industries. For example, the arts play a central role in attracting tourists to our province, and cultural tourists are wealthier and spend more than regular tourists. Your own studies document the fact that most cultural tourists don't visit us to see single events; they come to visit regions that contain culturally vibrant cities. Quite apart from the convincing economic arguments, including your own, there are the equally convincing social arguments. Studies produced by the federal government, many nations, the UN and your own ministry have definitively proved that a healthy cultural sector is absolutely key to the liveability of cities and towns, to public well-being, peace and tolerance, to general levels of creativity and innovation, to the education and motivation of children, to psychological health and to a general sense of pride and direction. The province of British Columbia has a long legacy of artistic excellence. Considering our relatively small population, our cultural exports enjoy a disproportionately high status nationally and internationally. Cuts like these will not only destroy our ability to prove ourself on the world stage and attract visitors, they will also result in a creative brain drain that will impoverish our region, harm tourism, and destroy the chances of related growth industries such as film, television, IT and video gaming to choose from a pool of highly creative and productive workers. Furthermore, private funding, if BC even had a culture of that, does not produce the culture of excellence and the quality of training that public funding does. You need to go back and read your own research. This is a quote from one of your own service plans: "Research has revealed that 75 per cent of Canadians consider the arts and heritage essential to their quality of life, and that community quality of life is the second-most important factor people consider (after salaries) when choosing jobs." Stimulus works in a recession, and in this case it will ensure BC's best creative minds stay in the province. Once you have devastate the BC cultural sector, it will take a very long time to rebuild it, and all of the industries it feeds will suffer. I insist that you reinstate the retracted gaming funds as well as the general revenue funds that support the arts. This is what a majority of British Columbians demand. Yours sincerely,
Letter from the Alberta Association of Artist-Run Centres: Honourable Kevin Krueger __________________________________________________________ Again, great informative links on this issue are here. |
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