By Christopher Guly
OTTAWA – Part of the federal government’s multibillion-dollar Covid-19 Economic Response Plan will be a $500-million emergency response fund for cultural, heritage and amateur sports organizations to continue to support artists and athletes, Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault announced on Friday.
“This targeted measure will provide financial support consistent with the government’s existing Covid-19 support measures for wages and fixed costs of organizations,” he said at the daily ministerial briefing in Ottawa. Please click here for the Minister’s tweeted video of the announcement.
The fund will be administered by Canadian Heritage “with the support of our partners, such as the Canada Council for the Arts,” said the minister without revealing any further details.
A statement from Canadian Heritage, sent to Cartt.ca, said the fund is a “temporary relief measure” created to address the financial needs of the target organizations facing significant losses due to the “cancellations of cultural and sporting events, as well as the closure of facilities, many cultural, heritage and sport organizations,” that have left “workers and their families…grappling with extraordinary financial pressures.”
The federal department said the goal is to have the funds made available “as quickly as possible,” and that it would work with the culture, heritage and amateur sports sectors “to clarify the terms of this financial support.”
Canada’s content creators celebrated the cash injection, even without details of how it will be structured.
“Now more than ever, the arts and culture play a pivotal role in our daily lives,” Christa Dickenson, executive director of Telefilm Canada, said in a statement. “In this vein, we look forward to continuing our discussions with Heritage Canada to see how Telefilm can further support the audiovisual industry and its talented creators.”
The Canada Media Fund (CMF) also welcomed the half-billion-dollar relief package.
“Canada’s screen-based industry generates $12.8 billion to Canada’s GDP and 181,000 well-paid jobs and has been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic,” CMF president and CEO Valerie Creighton said in a statement, noting that the government’s emergency support for the country’s creative sector was announced as part of its first round of sector-specific relief measures announced on Friday, which included a $2.5-billion bailout for the energy sector.
The CMF said that in addition to the $500-million emergency fund, it is responding to the Covid crisis by “providing maximum flexibility to funded projects and participating in an industry-wide taskforce [that includes Telefilm Canada and the National Film Board of Canada] assembled to assess the impact of the pandemic on the sector.”
In addition, the CMF has created a Covid-19 information hub for Canada’s Screen-based Industries that provides a directory of assistance programs for companies and workers in the industry.
In addition to the federal government’s financial lifeline, Canadian artists will also have a chance to flex their creative muscle during the ongoing nationwide lockdown.
Guilbeault also announced on Friday that this year Canada Day will be celebrated “virtually” across the country.
