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"Putting people to work is more important than putting more art on the wall of some New York City gallery frequented by the elite art community," said Republican Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia during the debate.

Lynch calls that attitude "uninformed and perhaps disingenuous." His group estimates that non-profit arts organizations generate $166.2 billion each year in cultural and related spending such as restaurants and parking, and they produce $30 billion in tax revenue and 5.7 million jobs.

"Those jobs are every bit as important as an auto industry worker," Lynch says. He says 10,000 arts groups employing 260,000 artists and support workers could close this year.

The Prime Minister's comments come in the wake of a recently released report from the Conference Board of Canada, in collaboration with the federal government, that confirms high economic returns on cultural investment. The report, entitled Valuing Culture: Measuring and Understanding Canada's Creative Economy, calls the cultural sector's role “as a magnet for talent, an enhancer of economic performance, and a catalyst for prosperity” a universal phenomenon.

The Conference Board estimates Canada's cultural sector generated $46-billion, or 3.8 per cent of Canada's GDP, in 2007. The sector's total impact including “indirect and induced effects” on other sectors leaves an economic footprint of $84.6-billion, or 7.4 per cent of GDP, the report states. Those revelations paint a picture of industry stability: Statistics Canada reported culture accounting for an identical 3.8 per cent of GDP in 2006.

The report put 2003 employment in the cultural sector at 616,000 jobs.

Including direct and indirect contributions to employment, the report estimates that culture accounted for 1.1 million jobs in 2007.

Canada's culture sector is being driven by growth in digital technology and expanding Internet use, the report states.

Neil Malhotra, of Claridge, said company officials are excited about the opportunity to host the gallery and contribute to the city and country.

He said when the government announced a competition between private developers in nine cities to bid for the right to host the gallery, company officials realized they had an opportunity to do something of importance to the city and its citizens.

"We realized having the gallery in Ottawa is something people in this community care about, that it should happen, and that we had a piece of land that is in a perfect location for it," he said. "It's a rare opportunity to do something like this, and I think we will have a very good chance of winning the competition if we can get everything done on time."

The gallery was originally supposed to go into the former United States embassy building on Wellington Street across from the hill, but the Harper government cancelled that project last year, citing escalating costs, then announced the competition.

Ottawa is competing with Vancouver, Halifax, Quebec City, Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton and Calgary for the right to have the gallery, which is part of Library and Archives Canada.

The move to have a bidding war amongst cities and developers to host the gallery sparked outrage from people who feel it should be in Ottawa along with the rest of the Canada's national institutions. Others feel having a national collection housed in a privately owned building is distasteful and makes the country look bad on the international scene.

Arts ire for canadian taxpayers federation

Members of B.C.'s arts community are reacting with incredulity to a public commentary released by the B.C. director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF). Titled "Art is a business and should not be subsidized," the November 5 missive, penned by Maureen Bader, states that government subsidies to the arts should be abolished. "Yes, art and cultural events make our lives more enjoyable, but who should pay for them? Taxpayers or individuals who freely choose to spend their money on art," it reads in part.

"When a government gets involved in subsidies there are two problems," Bader told the Straight . "One is it can make the art sort of a function of the state, but the other too is that it forces taxpayers to pay for art that they might not otherwise freely purchase."

In a phone interview with the Straight , Vancouver Symphony Orchestra music director Bramwell Tovey stated that Bader's argument is "lacking in perception".

"I think what we're talking about here is not government subsidy. We're talking about investment," he said. "We can see that it makes a lot of sense for the government to invest in the arts, because they more than give back on GST and PST.…Certainly this particular area of Vancouver, right in the inner city where we operate, would be destitute for about 100 nights a year without the economic activity that's generated by the performances here [at the Orpheum Theatre] by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra."

Gina Sufrin, executive director of the Assembly of BC Arts Councils, was also dismissive of Bader's commentary. "Reducing arts to a commodity is a notion that I think is really, really past its best-before date," she told the Straight. "Defining the arts solely as business activity is just so short sighted, in my opinion. It is often presented in marketplace terms, but I would think it would be more appropriate to compare government investment in the arts with government investment in things like parks and recreation. If we had to pay what it really costs, for example, to go swim at the aquatic centre, nobody would go. And yet nobody is saying the government shouldn't be subsidizing that activity."

Sufrin added that the government does not select artists to receive support; arm's-length organizations such as the Canada Council for the Arts and the BC Arts Council are responsible for decisions regarding government arts funding. "The process of funding is adjudicated by peer juries. The very reason for this is because it shouldn't be a political decision," said Sufrin.

The Assembly of BC Arts Councils is working with the Alliance for Arts and Culture and other organizations to campaign for an annual increase in BC Arts Council (BCAC) funding from $14 million to $32 million. According to a report prepared by the Alliance for Arts and Culture in support of the BC Arts Council funding increase, the $14 million currently invested in the BCAC "helps drive $4.2 billion in provincial domestic economic activity". The same report noted that the City of Vancouver has determined that every dollar it invests in the arts leverages $11.50 from other sources.

Bader's piece came just over two weeks after the Fraser Institute hosted a debate on government arts funding between Tovey and right-wing freelance journalist Elizabeth Nickson, whose work appears in the Women's Post and the Globe and Mail. (Nickson's regular National Post column was discontinued in 2004 after an allegation of plagiarism.) Last January, the Straight reported that the right-wing women's group REAL (Realistic, Equal, Active, for Life) Women of Canada was working with other organizations on a constitutional challenge to curtail the powers of the federal government to fund health care, education, and cultural activities. Bader said she is not involved with REAL Women of Canada and she is "not directly" involved with the Fraser Institute. "I go to their events," she said. Bader's biography on the CTF Web site ( www.taxpayer.com/ ) states that she worked at the Fraser Institute in 1991.

Bader claimed to be an artist herself. "I'm a painter. I have to work, just like most other artists," she said. "I have an easel in my office. I haven't been painting lately, anyway. I've been too busy working. It's very difficult to make a living from art."

The hope is the winning city can be named within the next eight or nine months, with construction of gallery completed by 2011 or 2012 - a decade after the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien first announced it would build the gallery in the reconstituted 1932 Beaux Arts-style building on Wellington. The original construction cost for the refurbishment was $22-million, but by spring, 2006, the overall cost had risen to $45-million, which includes an estimated $11-million that has already spent on design, site preparation and management fees.

Last fall, numerous media reports indicated the Tories had killed the project. However, nothing official was declared and the resultant vacuum was filled with reports that the minority Harper government was considering establishing the gallery as, variously, an online museum, a touring showcase and, finally, as a permanent fixture in the huge EnCana Centre now under construction in downtown Calgary. (The portrait gallery is currently overseen by Library and Archives Canada, a Crown corporation, and its collection stored in a climate-controlled vault in Gatineau, Que.)

Nine cities are invited to compete for the prize of securing the portrait gallery. Toronto is on the list, along with Halifax, Quebec City, Ottawa-Gatineau, Montreal, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver. The catch: this will be a private/public partnership.

Translation: someone in the lucky city that wins gets to pay the bills so that Stephen Harper's government won't have to.

The federal government wants nine cities across Canada to compete for the right to host the national portrait gallery originally slated to open in Ottawa.

"Our government has set forth the notion that national cultural institutions do not necessarily have to be located in the national capital," said Heritage Minister Josée Verner at a news conference Friday announcing what she called "a bold and innovative step."

The campaign coincides with the legislative committee on finance and government services completing public hearings across the province held between September 17 and October 12. The committee will file a report by November 15.

"When you consider that the projected surplus for the province is $1.6 billion, $18 million [the amount of the increase being lobbied for] is 1.12 percent of that. That's not very much," Andrew Wilhelm-Boyles , executive director of the alliance, told the Straight .

Last year, a similar campaign was launched prior to the 2007 provincial budget. Despite a unanimous recommendation by the cross-party committee that the government increase arts council funding, the government chose not to do so.

"If there is a will on the part of the minister of the arts, if there is a will on the part of the minister of finance, the recommendations of this committee certainly strengthen their hand," insisted Wilhelm-Boyles, who noted that arts funding in B.C. is among the lowest in the country. Saskatchewan, with a population of less than one million, recently doubled its arts-board funding from $4.5 million to $9 million, which represents more than $9 per capita in arts funding. By contrast, B.C.'s arts-council funding amounts to just over $3 per capita, putting it ahead of only Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland.

The last time funding for the B.C. Arts Council was increased was in the 2005-06 budget, when it was raised by $3 million, to $14 million.