Canada Council:
the art of
wasting money

DON CURRIE is uw North Vancouver man who spends a
lot of time worrying about money. Your money, that is.
Money that the feds pour into organizations like the
Canada Council. Money that goes down the drain.

Wednesday. May 29, 1991 - North Shore News - 9

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But it’s a labor of love for him
and he’s delivered a lovely lor of
stuff to me that you might dike to
hear about,

Writes Don: “The Cenada
Council finances virtually every
nose-flute and kazoo-band in the
country ... Every twinkle-toey
dance studio got some money in
1990 and so did everyone taking
home movies with their video
camera or daubing paint on can-
vas or plasterboard. And let us
not foreet the writers of unread
poetry and badly-written prose.
Plus their publishers.’”

How true, Well, almost. | knaw
at feast two peaple with video
cameras who didn’t get a cent.
But Don is on the right track.

He rages that $27 million for
Keith Spicer to squander is bad
enough, but that’s only a one-shot
deal. in 1989-90 Canada Council
got a parliamentary appropriation
of 3103,503,000 and showed ex-
penses of $18,337,000 to give this
and other moneys away. They
took salaries of $9,272,000,
benefits of $1,398,000, and travel
expenses of $936,000.’*

Nothing has changed. § did
some columns on the council in
the 1970s and it was the same
then.

As Don puts it, ‘* Phere is very
little point in electing politicians
these days. The entrenched bu-
reaucracy is bedded in tighter than
ticks and no politician has the
guts to take the knife and dig
them out.”

Worried that he might have got
a few figures wrong, I scanned the
council’s Jatest annual report. But
he’. bang on. Let’s be fair,
though. The fact is that Ottawa
wastes billions. It is a Vesuvius of
waste. So the money it gives to
people who should be out selling
ice-cream or working in the local
7-Eleven instead of taking hand-
outs is really no more than a drop
in the proverbial bucket. Srill,
waste is waste,

The Canada Council lot take
themselves scriously, too. To read
the blurbs you would think they
are saving civilization itself. | got
a big laugh out of the director’s
report, which included trumpet
voluntaries like:

“At this significant moment in
history, when barriers around the
world are falling, it is of the ut-
most importance that we, as Ca-
nadians, recognize the enduring
contributions that artists make..."
And so on.

But we are the ones making the
contributions.

Allan Gotlieb, our former am-
bassador to Washington and
friend of Mr. Al-mashat is the
council’s chairman. How some
people cisculate! You just can't
keep them down,

But he must be the right man
because he managed to bull the
Baloneyites into not making any

St. John Ambulance Week
proclamation correction

The cutline for a photograph at
North Vancouver District Mayor
Murray ODvkeman and two St.
John Ambulance representatives
in Noel Wright's May 22) News
column incorrectly siated that St.

SURREY

Doug

Collins WEN

reg. price

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Sheeting & Fleece
reg tZe. tt

Yo" regular

ON THE OTHER HAND

cuts “during (this) time of fiscal
restraint.’” Pity.

There are laughs galore in the
report if you have a taste for the
absurd. You might think, too,
that some of the beneficiaries of
these alms had actually been born
on the council.

Names I saw in the '70s and see
again now include Bill Bissett the
“‘poet,”’ who likes to call himself
bill bissett, that being more ar-
tistic, und Susan Musgrave. Do
they appear every yeur, just like
the ditisies?

There are also grants to the
Canadian-Puajabi English Litera-
ture Series, the Afro-Canadian
Cultural Society, something called
The Bootmakers of Toronto, and
the Mountain Writers’ Con-
ference. (What does it take to be a
Mountain Writer, besides grants,
that is?)

“Writers’’ of whom you have
never heard and are never likely to
hear abound in these pages, in-
cluding a couple of North Shore
folk whose names bam too kind
to mention,

There are also grants of up to
$15,000 for *‘professional writers
of non-fiction to write a new
work.’ But why do they need
grants if they are professionals?
Did Pierre Berton need any
grants? Did Dickens?

Another little charity system
operated by the council is the Ca-
nadian Art Bank. In the year
under review, it purchased 609
*tworks of art’ for $879,920 from
Canadian artists of whom you
have also never heard. They are
then rented out to government
departments — cruel and unusual!
punishment even for civil servants,
if you ask me, given the current
state of “art.* And the cost of
administering the program was
more than the income from the
rentals.

And as Don points out, none of
that includes the $3 million for
rofler-painted stripes bought from
an American. Have a nice day.

13090 10481 Ay:

Ambulance Week in the

district was May 23 to 29.) North

John

has, wm tact,

2) uy St

Vancouver District

proclaimed June 23 ta

John Ambulance Week.

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