Harper kills the music

Avi Lewis must drive the Harper government wild. The idea that Lewis, a broadcast journalist, Randy Bachman's son Tal or author Gwynne Dyer would get a cent in government cultural subsidies seems to have pushed the Conservatives over the edge.

This week, the government announced it will put an end to the two small subsidy programs that helped promote Canada's culture abroad. PromArt, a $4.7-million cultural program administered by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, will be shut down by March next year, as will Trade Routes, a $9-million-a-year program under the Department of Heritage, which helps Canadian cultural organizations sell their products internationally.

For a country, this is cutting off your nose to spite your face. Two-year-olds, teenagers and irrational adults might indulge in pointless self-destruction, but governments are not supposed to jeopardize entire economic sectors no matter how angry they are that someone they don't like qualified for a grant.

A less ideologically driven government would know that Canada's $84.6-billion cultural sector, with its million-plus workers, should be encouraged and promoted at home and internationally.

As the Conference Board of Canada helpfully explained just last month, the culture sector - which in this country includes Gwynne Dyer, whom the Conservatives called, the Globe and Mail reported, a "left-wing" writer with lots of money, - plays "a critical role in attracting people, business and investment and in distinguishing our country as a dynamic and exciting place to live and work."

But this seems not to count for much with the Conservative government. Faced with the arts, it tends to show a distressingly Stalinist turn of mind, concerned more with ferretting out undeserving beneficiaries of state financing than acting in the country's interest.

According to published reports, here is how Prime Minister Stephen Harper's press secretary, Kory Teneycke, explained why the government decided it would no longer promote Canadian culture abroad: "In the case of PromArt, we think the (funding) choices made were inappropriate ... because they were ideological in some cases, with highly ideological individuals exposing their agendas or (funding given to) wealthy celebrities or fringe arts groups that in many cases would be at best, unrepresentative, and at worse, offensive."

It's possible that there were "inappropriate" beneficiaries of state aid, but the specific cases cited by Conservatives fall safely within conventional cultural boundaries. Tal Bachman, whom few Canadians would have identified as a celebrity, wealthy or otherwise, was invited, Marc Weisblott reports, to be a musical ambassador for Canada in South Africa and Zimbabwe in 2005. On a trip subsidized by a $16,500 grant, Bachman visited AIDS hospices and orphanages and community centres. "It's not something you do because you're looking to promote yourself," Bachman told Weisblott.

Avi Lewis, a well-known broadcast journalist, is the son of Stephen Lewis, a diplomat and former leader of the Ontario NDP, and is married to writer Naomi Klein. His political leanings should be of no consequence to a government interested in promoting the full gamut of Canada's thinking abroad. Other grant recipients include the Vancouver Art Gallery, given $60,000 to organize an exhibition of Jeff Wall's work at the Moscow Biennale, and the Canadian Museum of Civilization, which received $50,000 to organize a tour of Canadian Inuit art in Brazil next year, both brilliant examples of the scope of artistic achievement in Canada.

The Harper government seems not to appreciate, or care, that Canada is competing on the world stage to be thought of as a cultured, intelligent, dynamic nation. The British Council spends $60 million a year - $1 per capita - sending its culture out into the world. Ireland, with a population of 4.5 million, plans to spend $7.5 million on projects in 60 countries to bring "outstanding artists" to events such as the Venice Biennale and the Frankfurt Book Fair. And Canada? Authors, booksellers, publishers who want to get to the Frankfurt Book Fair had better be prepared to get there on their own. And if they can't? Our loss.

Canada does not gain by being unknown. Countries whose artists are not seen, their books unread and their music unheard feel marginal and insignificant. They're not world players. No country without a soul can be.

In an increasingly global, interconnected world, Canada needs to make connections. Art and culture are a direct, inexpensive and usually welcome way of forming links.

Reinstating the programs is the least the Conservative government should do.

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