The Canada Council for the Arts (CCA) was conspicuous by its absence in the pages of the last federal budget. No new money to support creation while the Council received a record number of 6,750 applications for its Explore and Create program in the last competition of 2023.
All accepted, these requests would have cost nearly $215 million, or more than two-thirds of the annual grant budget. Result: the success rate was low, by the CAC’s own admission, at 16.6%, while it was at its lowest at 36% in 2022-2023. Without reinvestment, the situation cannot recover. Has the Canada Arts Council reached saturation point?
Grants awarded for the fall competition will total $36.2 million and will support 1,125 projects. This is the largest investment that the CAC has made in an Explore and Create program competition, other than during the exceptional period of the pandemic. Why does this no longer seem to meet demand?
The Council will realize savings gradually over the next three years. […] We will realize most of the savings […] by reducing our administrative expenses and gradually closing, by 2025, the Strategic Innovation Fund, a fund which was intended from the start to be of limited duration Michelle Chawla »
In a post of rare transparency published on February 29, Michelle Chawla, general director of the CAC since June 2023, answers several questions that have arisen in the performing arts world since the last two Explore and Create competitions. At the federal level, this is the program that funds artists and organizations for research, development, creation and production of works, as well as for the professional development of artists.
On social networks, numerous discussions from performing arts artists since last fall have alleged a refusal rate higher than the norm. Many wonder about the impact of multidisciplinary juries, miss the days when individual feedback on their requests was given (which allowed them to improve subsequent ones), miss the time when an agent could answer the phone quickly at their questions and ask the CAC for better communication.
Michelle Chawla explains that the low success rate last financial year “is due to both an unprecedented volume of applications and the return to the regular CAC budget after the end of one-off government funding for the pandemic”.
“Between 2017 and 2023, we saw the number of applications submitted [à ce programme] triple. » Last year, the CAC received 27,000 grant applications.
Cuts of 10 million
In addition, the Canada Council for the Arts is itself under cuts, as part of the federal initiative to refocus government spending.
“The Council will realize savings gradually over the next three years, according to the following schedule: $3.63 million in 2024-2025, $7.33 million in 2025-2026 and $9.88 million in 2026- 2027 and for the following years,” says Mme Shawla. These amounts are not cumulative: the $9.88 million represents 2.7% of the funding that the CAC currently receives from the government.
“We will realize most of the savings […] by reducing our administrative expenses and gradually closing, by 2025, the Strategic Innovation Fund, a fund which was intended from the start to be of limited duration,” specifies the director.
“I also want to assure you that these savings will have no impact on the Council’s regular grant programs or its operational capacity,” says Ms.me Shawla.
For the Union of Quebec Writers (UNEQ), this reduction in funds granted to the Canada Arts Council raises fears of the worst for creators. “With artists already at the end of their tether, the blatant lack of support from the government places them on life support – how many of them will still be able to create and work in these conditions? The response compares to the investments announced: very little, really very little,” worries Pierre-Yves Villeneuve, president of UNEQ.
“The current situation, with what is happening simultaneously at the provincial level with the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, makes the situation extremely serious,” believes the Conseil québécois du théâtre. “This breaking point that we are facing had been named in advance. There is the potential for a perfect storm, and we fear the domino effects that could change the face of the theater ecosystem,” added co-presidents Michelle Parent and Véronique Pascal.