My response to the G&M article "B.C. arts groups blast funding cuts".


@libndp-terminator: The argument that the private sector should fund the arts ignores the fact that many industries in the private sector are funded by the government directly or indirectly through tax incentives, or moves like the recent HST (BC and Ontario, not sure where else) that took a tax away from business and transferred it to consumers. The oil industry is subsidized by the government. Health care is subsidized by the government. The arts are a (vibrant, healthy) industry just like any other that, rather than being invested in through these recessionary times, are seeing their already meagre funding cut away. 

@goolneb: The arts already stretch a dollar farther and more efficiently than most other industries. And the amount of arts funding out of the BC government's entire budget that has been cut is so small so as to be negligible.

The fact that the money cut from existing arts organizations seems to be earmarked for "Olympic spirit-prolonging" government-conceived festivals? A cynical and rather dis-spiriting move to say the least.