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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.

The culture sector bridges geographical distances and creates greatly expanded social networks.

Tomorrow's report card comes two weeks after Canada's largest municipalities reported that incomes are not keeping pace with the rising cost of housing and called on Ottawa to craft a national plan.

Under the 2001 federal-provincial housing deal, Ottawa agreed to spend $680 million over five years if the provinces matched the federal funds. Ottawa added $320 million in 2003 and brought the total federal-provincial funding promised to $2 billion.

But federal-provincial spending data collected by the Wellesley Institute shows that spending on housing in 2007 was roughly the same as in 2001. (This doesn't include a one-time $1.4 billion federal payment to the provinces in 2007, the result of a deal struck between the previous Paul Martin government and the NDP to ensure passage of the 2005 budget.)

"This means that, across the country, instead of a net new $2 billion in housing funding, as promised in 2001, any new housing funding has either replaced previous dollars or not even been made," the report says.

Wednesday's meeting is the first time in more than two years the housing ministers have met. Federal Human Resources Minister Monte Solberg has not yet confirmed his attendance and if he doesn't show up, it will be the first time in almost a decade that Ottawa hasn't been represented at such a gathering, Shapcott says.

During the last provincial housing ministers' meeting held outside Halifax in 2005, Ottawa and the provinces agreed to work quickly on a national federal-provincial housing strategy with goals, timetables and long-term funding.

Little has happened in the interim. As a result, all current federal housing programs are set to expire by March next year.

This week's meeting comes in the wake of last fall's fact-finding visit by the UN's Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, who called on the federal government to work with the provinces to implement and fund a comprehensive national housing strategy to meet the housing needs of Canadians.

Canada is the only major country that doesn't have a national housing strategy, the report notes.