Throughout this election—which Stephen Harper so hastily called—there has been a lot of talk about the arts. I have joined a group of artists who are very concerned with Mr. Harper’s ideas about art. For me, his disposition towards the arts is a symbol of everything he stands for.
We must remember that Mr. Harper started this debate by eliminating—two weeks before calling the election—two government programs that helped artists present their work overseas. Though these programs were small, Harper’s actions had a greater impact. Soon, almost $50 million in other program cuts were uncovered. These cuts show a systematic change in government policy.
I am more concerned about the bullying manner in which those programs were eliminated. It shows how we can expect Harper to act in the future: unilaterally dismantling public institutions that have taken generations to build—our universal health care system, and our status as a peacekeeping nation in a world plagued by conflict—and vetoing real progress by ignoring the hard facts of climate change.
It’s hard to know where Mr. Harper will hit next. Many Canadians feel like deer in headlights, frozen by the glare.
I try to think of everything as part of a whole. As an artist, I tend to think of life “culturally.” How we talk, act, dress and behave is no less important than what we have learned, where we work, who we love and how we live—they are all part of who we are. Every part is important.
You can apply this holistic way of thinking to the arts. Everyone knows something important about Canadian culture, whether it’s the fact that Karen Kain was lead ballerina of the National Ballet, Margaret Atwood is a famous writer, or Joni Mitchell was born in Saskatchewan. Not all Canadians attend the ballet, read Atwood, or like “Big Yellow Taxi,” but they recognize the significance of each. These artifacts define us as Canadians, just as much as the skits of Rick Mercer or the music of Holy Fuck. Canadian arts include the whole nation: you can’t pit what plays in Moose Jaw against what happens in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Peterborough, or Halifax.
As artists, we cannot let Mr. Harper pit pop music against the concert hall, comics against painting, or Jeopardy against Passchendaele. Harper can’t convince us that he’s putting more money into the arts when we see how the cuts happen—by whim: cuts here, payoffs to Conservative supporters there.
Mr. Harper would like us to believe that the many aspects of Canadian life can be divided, that one thing is the enemy of another, one person is worthy and another expendable. This breeds ignorance, or worse, elevates it to a virtue.
Mr. Harper scares me. He scares a lot of people. And when we are afraid, it’s hard to make good decisions. That is how our Prime Minister operates: by lowering our expectations, reducing our sense of self-esteem, intimidating us into giving up on the things that engage us, the wonderful differences that move and change us.
I can’t tell you how you should vote, or whether voting will produce the result you want. You have to make up your own mind. You have to vote with your conscience and put your faith in the electoral system. All I can hope is that you do vote, and that you do so with confidence—in hope, and not out of fear.
Robert Labossiere is a member of the Department of Culture, an ad hoc movement of artists engaging with the issues during the current election. The opinions expressed in this letter are strictly his own. Get involved http://www.departmentofculture.ca.
