Tomorrow Starts Today program sees surprise one-year extension before budget

Canadian Heritage has given another year of funding certainty to arts groups in renewing this week $192 million in support for the arts under its Tomorrow Starts Today initiative, a portion of which goes to new media players. The program was due to expire at the end of the fiscal 2004-05 year. Canadian Heritage minister Liza Frulla announced December 15 that funding through the program will continue in the 2005-06 fiscal year, though arts groups will have to wait until the next federal budget to find out if this second extension of the program will be its last. The news should provide some relief to new media companies in Canada that currently rely on some chunk of the $9-million-a-year of Telefilm Canada’s Canada New Media Fund to mount their projects. For several months, groups representing digital interactive media content producers have been lobbying Parliamentarians for the renewal of Tomorrow Starts Today funding for the CNMF (CNM, Oct. 29/04). Ted Bairstow, head of the Canadian Culture Online Program (CCOP), under which the CNMF operates, says he’s pleased with the early announcement of the funding, and looks forward to beginning discussions with Telefilm and other program officials on how the extension of Tomorrow Starts Today funding will affect them. "We’re really pleased that they gave us a decision in advance of the budget. Given that the budget is likely to come down before the end of the fiscal year, (Canadian Heritage) could have held off until then, but they realized, in some of the areas at least, how important it is for people to be able to plan ahead. So, they’ve given us a decision on that first year ahead of the budget, and basically told us to wait until the budget to find out whether there’s going to be longer term funding," Bairstow tells CNM. "We get about half of our budget from the Tomorrow Starts Today money, so if we had lost that, we would have had to go back to square one and figure out exactly how to divide up the budget that we’ve got amongst the various programs that we support. And, now, we don’t have to do that. We can look at continuing next year with the same level of resources that we’ve got this year." He says it’s too early to make specific announcements, however, about whether funding levels will be maintained at the levels they were under previous rounds of Tomorrow Starts Today. "There’s still an expenditure review process going on and that may affect our resource levels to some extent, and, once again, we’ll have to wait until the budget to find out the precise amount of money we’ll have next year, but we’re working on the assumption that we’ll have roughly the same amount, so we’re planning to start doing the things that we do. We’ve already made a call for one (the Partnerships fund) with a disclaimer on it." Bairstow says it won’t be long before Telefilm Canada has a contribution agreement in hand to begin a new round of funding, and he expects discussions to begin immediately. While the news will cheer new media producers to some extent, there will nonetheless be grumblings about maintaining the status quo. A prominent consultant, David Ellis, has recommended topping the fund up to around $30 million per year, which won’t be able to happen under the current funding extension. But, there may be a silver lining in the process by holding off further funding announcements until the budget. For months, rumours have circulated that a report by the Canadian Culture Online Program (CCOP) advisory board – for which no evidence exists that it will be released publicly any time soon – will recommend an increase in the Canada New Media Fund to the level envisioned by Ellis. Since it’s assumed by most that further funding will be forthcoming in the next budget, it leaves as much as two months or more for continued lobbying. Arts groups across the country have been asking Ottawa for more stable funding for several months now. At a meeting of the newly-partisan Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage on December 8, MPs lambasted top Heritage staff for their slow response to the funding needs of those groups, with one, NDP member Charlie Angus, accusing the government of using Tomorrow Starts Today financing as a political rabbit-out-of-the-hat to score points with grateful constituents. "My first thing is that I feel like we’re watching the dance of 1,000 veils," Angus told the committee. "It’s terrible that you have budgeted zero dollars for the coming year when you know you’re going to have to provide the funding." Nearly all the members told Heritage staff that only long-term funding for the arts, "A-base funding" in the parlance of Ottawa, would be suitable. Bev Oda characterized the "begging" that arts groups have been forced to undertake as "appalling." Staffers were sympathetic, but say a process is underway to evaluate the effectiveness of the programs – a review that must be completed before bureaucrats can give the minister guidance on how the program is working. Asked how much money Heritage staff would recommend to fund the arts, and for how long, Heritage associate deputy minister Susan Peterson told member Marc Lemay, "That’s not a question to put to officials." The meeting ended on a motion from Oda, part of which was answered by Heritage with its December 15 announcement of continued funding. The motion read: "That, in response to the request by the artists and cultural communities across Canada and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities for the renewal of Tomorrow Starts Today, the Minister of Canadian Heritage report in the House the intent of this government to renew or not renew this program before the end of this session of the House and whether it will be renewed as an A-based program or not."

Tomorrow Starts Today program sees surprise one-year extension before budget

News | 12/16/2004 5:00 am EST

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