(W)Hol(l)y Fucked!: Strategizing Resistance to the Harper Arts Cuts

Abstract

WHEN STEPHEN HARPER'S CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT announced on Friday, 8 August 2008 that it would cut PromArt, a program budgeted at $4.7 million which subsidizes international tours of Canadian artists, Anne Howland, a spokesperson for Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson, denied that the cut had any ideological bias: it was simply sound budgetary trimming. But in the next breath, she contradicted her own talking point: Certainly we felt some of the groups [subsidized] were not necessarily ones we thought Canadians would agree were the best choices to be representing them internationally. Pressed for an example, she shamefacedly dropped a self-censored F-bomb: don't even want to say [their name] on the phone. Holy F, that was one that was flagged. A Juno-nominated Toronto electronica band, Holy Fuck became a focus for the culture wars that would preoccupy many Canadians in the opening phases of the 2008 federal election, as Harper and the Tories followed up this announcement with further cuts to arts budgets totaling $45 million. In identifying some effective and some counter-productive ways in which resistance to these cuts can be framed, I want to take this moment of taboo as paradigmatic of the way in which our government operates: claiming non-ideological status for their free-market neoliberalism and a moral decadence on the part of those who question it. The government defended its cuts by releasing misleading figures about their budgetary support for the arts, arguing that they spent more than the previous Liberal government. The Globe and Mail did some number crunching and found that this was a classic manipulation of statistics. For one thing, the arts are handled by the Department of Canadian Heritage (a worrisome situation in itself), which pursues two strategic objectives, known in acronymic bureaucratese as SO1 and SO2. The former covers support for Canadian artists' expression at home and abroad (literature, music, film, other media, support for festivals, etc.), whereas SO2 promotes intercultural understanding, citizen participation. and sports. Since the Conservatives were elected in 2006, contributions to S01, which is the core source of funding for the arts, have declined from $817 million to $759 million. Contributions to SO2, however, which has nothing to do with the arts, have increased from $567.7 million to $631.6 million, which accounts for the overall augmentation to the ministry budget. Evidence that funding to SO1 did increase in the first year of the Harper government before taking its dive is accounted for by the fact that because of the federal election, budgetary processes were disrupted and the Liberals' previously budgeted amounts for the arts for 2005-06 were included in the Conservatives' first-year figures. So thanks a lot ... Paul. In fact, contrary to Howland's claim, the cuts were entirely ideological, forming part of the current government's propagandization of Canadian culture abroad. Of course, the promotion of Canadian culture internationally has always served ideological purposes; witness Foreign Affairs documents such as the following: Filmmaker Atom Egoyan, multimedia director Robert Lepage, visual artist Jeff Wall, and author Margaret Atwood have made waves in Europe with even quirky that are resolutely made in Canada. Such cultural figures are important elements of global brand, one that garners recognition all over the world but particularly in Europe. On a continent so deeply steeped in the arts, credibility in the cultural arena strengthens all aspects of our country's international relations. Note the nervous balancing of the individual, quirky visions with the steamroller collectivism of Canada's global brand. There's something about artistic production that is not as compliant as the architects of this document might wish, and something of their underlying anxiety seeps into their prose In making these cuts, the Harper government acts in a similar vein, nervously circumscribing the overseas activities of Canadian artists. …