Recently Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, called the arts a bunch of rich people gathering at galas and whining about grants. (Yeah, the big bucks are just pouring in for yours truly. I’ll be retiring in Monocco soon.) Hurray for literary icon Margaret Atwood! I love how she grabbed the proverbial bull by the horns and set the record straight in this article recently published in the Globe and Mail:
What sort of country do we want to live in? What sort of country do we already live in? What do we like? Who are we?
At present, we are a very creative country. For decades, we’ve been punching above our weight on the world stage – in writing, in popular music and in many other fields. Canada was once a cultural void on the world map, now it’s a force. In addition, the arts are a large segment of our economy: The Conference Board estimates Canada’s cultural sector generated $46-billion, or 3.8 per cent of Canada’s GDP, in 2007. And, according to the Canada Council, in 2003-2004, the sector accounted for an “estimated 600,000 jobs (roughly the same as agriculture, forestry, fishing, mining, oil & gas and utilities combined).”
But we’ve just been sent a signal by Prime Minister Stephen Harper that he gives not a toss for these facts. Tuesday, he told us that some group called “ordinary people” didn’t care about something called “the arts.”
His idea of “the arts” is a bunch of rich people gathering at galas whining about their grants. Well, I can count the number of moderately rich writers who live in Canada on the fingers of one hand: I’m one of them, and I’m no Warren Buffett. I don’t whine about my grants because I don’t get any grants. I whine about other grants – grants for young people, that may help them to turn into me, and thus pay to the federal and provincial governments the kinds of taxes I pay, and cover off the salaries of such as Mr. Harper. In fact, less than 10 per cent of writers actually make a living by their writing, however modest that living may be. They have other jobs. But people write, and want to write, and pack into creative writing classes, because they love this activity – not because they think they’ll be millionaires.
For the full article see:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080924.wcoarts25/BNStory/politics/home
Kathy-Diane Leveille 