Filibuster Cartoons
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There haven’t been many controversies in this election so far. Things seem to be playing out in a fairly conventional way, and everyone expects Stephen Harper to be reelected in some form.
But being the front-runner has opened the Conservatives up to a lot of criticism from the various interest groups who didn’t fare particularly well under Harper’s first term. Among the most vocal of these has been Canada’s so-called “art community,” who, under the previous Liberal governments, had come to rely quite heavily on a consistent flow of federal subsidies for their work. Harper’s government has scaled back these subsidies in a number of ways, both through outright cuts and the imposition of stricter “standards” that artists must conform to in order to recieve cash.
Granted, a lot of this math is fuzzy; the Conservatives maintain that they haven’t actually decreased federal arts funding in any serious way, just tinkered with the existing regime to make it more efficient and cost-effective. But perception is what matters, and the “Conservatives as anti-art” label seems to be sticking.
