Canada's culture war

Because Canada is at war in Afghanistan, one shouldn't be too careless about throwing war metaphors around. But it doesn't detract from the noble intention of that endeavour to say there is another war happening, and its opening salvo has already been launched. As of April 1, the public diplomacy budget for Canada's network of consulates worldwide will be cut to zero. That is, from $11.8 million to zero. As Val Ross notes in the Globe and Mail (September 30, 2006), the focus of the cuts are discretionary funds for the promotion of culture. So it's a culture war, and Canadians need to decide whether they care about it or not.



Almost twelve million dollars is quite a saving. Especially if you can convince the public that the programs you cut were profligate in the first place. This is the Tories' strategy. A federal government press release of October 25, 2006 characterizes monies previously allotted to cultural diplomacy as "wasteful." In the public response to this the tendency is to debate the numbers--defending the value of Canadian culture, Ross writes, "Canadian cultural exports ... total almost $5 billion annually"--and of course this is right.

It is important to counter the bizarre supposition that culture is somehow not a real industry. It is also important not to accept the terms of the debate as the Harper government has set them. The argument does not begin and end with the idea that culture traveling beyond our borders is not our concern. There is a wider issue at stake. Writing on the subject, also in the Globe (January 27, 2007), Margaret Atwood puts it succinctly: "If these things can be done in a minority government, lo, I say unto you, what things shall be done in a majority?" A government with only a tenuous mandate to rule that slashes the budget for cultural promotion so precipitously appears extremely narrow in its worldview, if not extremist. As Atwood further notes, we can only speculate what kind of ignorance and hatred motivates cuts like these.

A more measured and, indeed, humane view of the value of cultural diplomacy can be found in the pages of this issue of C. Candice Hopkins, director of the Vancouver artist-run centre Western Front, interviews Lida Abdul, an artist from Afghanistan. The two first met while both were participating in residencies at the Banff Centre, and a portfolio of Abdul's work was recently published in the Toronto glossy Prefix Photography. Canada's networks of cultural exchange are working well, in other words. And, significantly, Abdul's participation in the last Venice Biennale was financed in part by the Canadian consul in Kabul. Canadians should be proud that we could make this small contribution.

As Hopkins notes, Abdul was the first Afghan artist to represent her country at the Biennale. It takes incredible courage to make art when your country is a war zone. But as Abdul herself says, "You can't give up even in the face of massive destruction and tragedy. You have to affirm life. For me it is life-affirming to create work, to move on"

The Canadian diplomacy cuts are taking place in a cultural climate which has recently seen the suspension of publication of Parachute, the only Canadian magazine of any format that has a significant public profile abroad. That's no small achievement. The Canada Council spent 30 years investing in the development of this profile and in Parachute's impressive reach into international networks of magazine distribution. In recent years, however, they have been withdrawing their support. C and many other magazines are being subjected to the same series of cuts. Although unrelated to Harper's budget measures, the rationale is roughly the same: the Canadian magazine industry, like Canadian culture as a whole, should be able to fend for itself on the open market. It's a dubious argument and one that is contrary to global trends, as many people have pointed out. (Ross: "England, Germany, France and Italy all spend about $1 billion a year on cultural diplomacy") Other factors may have contributed to the decision to stop publishing Parachute, but the magazine's press release on the topic makes it clear that deteriorating levels of government subsidy were a determining factor.


Harper thinks Canadians don't care about culture. And maybe he's right about that. As of March 7, after circulating for over four weeks, a petition against these cuts had 6,134 signatures. Not a very impressive number. Multiply that number by 10 and you know a real cultural constituency is speaking. Taking an optimistic view, perhaps it's just a slow burner and not sputtering out.