The 2024 federal budget tabled by the Honourable Chrystia Freeland today included good news for the touring and presenting sector.
Budget 2024 proposes to provide $31 million over two years, starting in 2024-25, to the Department of Canadian Heritage for the Canada Arts Presentation Fund to help support organizations that professionally present arts festivals or performing arts series.
Budget 2024 – Fairness for every generation
This is nearly double the current supplementary funding that has been provided to the program since 2019. From $8 million per year, the program will now receive $15.5 million per year.
This funding will benefit nearly 1,600 organizations in every province and territory. It will also contribute to sustaining 78,000 cultural jobs. The funding will have an immediate impact on artists and their representatives whose summer, fall and winter tours were still pending on the confirmation of available funding on the engagers’ end.
“We are deeply grateful for this recognition of the vital role that performing arts organizations and festivals play in bringing Canadian communities together. We are also proud of the sector’s diligent efforts in demonstrating the need for this investment.”
– Natalie Lue, CAPACOA Board Chair
On the downside, none of the supplementary funding has been permanently added to the program’s funding base. In other words, this funding offers an immediate relief and a significant boost, but the program is still set to return to its 2007 funding level in two years. The #FutureOfLIVE coalition’s has long advocated for predictable funding, which is a necessity considering that tours are usually planned two to three years before artists hit the stage. This message has not been heard. Yet.
Other noteworthy investments
- Budget 2024 proposes to provide $45 million over three years, starting in 2025-26, for the National Arts Centre to ensure continued support for artists and productions across the country.
- Budget 2024 proposes to provide $10 million over three years, starting in 2024-25, to Canadian Heritage for the Canada Book Fund to elevate Canadian authors and stories both at home and abroad through increased supports for Canadian authors and book publishers.
- Budget 2024 proposes to provide $10 million over two years, starting in 2024‑25, to the Department of Canadian Heritage, to support Harbourfront Centre’s ability to make critical capital repairs.
- Budget 2024 proposes to provide $42 million in 2024-25 for CBC/Radio-Canada news and entertainment programming, ensuring Canadians across the country, including rural, remote, Indigenous, and minority language communities, have access to high-quality, independent journalism and entertainment.
- To support the production of independent, reliable, and diverse local news across the country, the government announced $58.8 million over three years, starting in 2024-25, to the Department of Canadian Heritage for the Local Journalism Initiative.
- In addition, on March 24, 2024, the government had announced $32 million over two years, starting in 2024‑25, to the Department of Canadian Heritage for the Canada Music Fund;
- Finally, under the heading “Concert and Sport Ticket Fairness “, the Budget 2024 announces that the federal government will work with provinces and territories and encourage them to adopt best practice requirements for ticket sales, with three priority goals:
- Ticket sales transparency, to continue to protect Canadians from unexpected charges through upfront, all-in pricing;
- Stronger protections for Canadians, including against excess fees and better ensuring they get timely refunds when events are cancelled; and,
- Cracking down on fraudulent resellers and reseller practices which unfairly drive up prices, such as using bot technology to maliciously buy and resell tickets.
About the #FutureOfLIVE
The #FutureOfLIVE coalition is a collective of 35 performing arts, presenting, festival and music industry associations. Together, they advocate for predictable and increased funding for performing arts presenting organizations and festivals. The #FutureOfLIVE campaign began in October 2022 and ran right up until the 2024 federal budget. The campaign generated engagement from individual organizations in every province and it rallied support from MPs of all political allegiance. It also received media attention from 21 newspapers, 13 radio broadcasters, and 4 television broadcasters/online news sites.
About the live performance sector
- The live performance domain contributed $3.6 billion to the Canadian Gross Domestic Product in 2023. In constant dollars, this is essentially the same as in 2019 (-0.1%).
- The live performance domain accounted for 78,000 jobs in 2023.This is 3.3% more than in 2019.
Source: Statistics Canada, Table 36-10-0652-01 National culture and sport indicators by domain and sub-domain. Release date: 2024-04-15. Calculations by CAPACOA.
