Support for Culture

In 2001, the Government of Canada announced the Tomorrow Starts Today initiative, which provides major support for Canadian arts and culture. Since its introduction, the initiative has provided almost $740 million to all aspects of the creative process encouraging excellence among Canada's artists, promoting arts and culture among the population as a whole and providing cultural industries with the means to prosper in the 21st century.

On December 15, 2004, the Minister of Canadian Heritage announced that this initiative would be extended for another year with a budget of up to $192 million, with $172 million of new funding and the remainder from reallocation within the Department. Budget 2005 further extends the $172 million of new funding per year for another four years, for a total of $688 million. This brings total new funding for Tomorrow Starts Today to $860 million over five years. This multi-year investment will help create stability within the arts and culture community by providing predictable levels of funding in the years to come. It will also help cultivate a vibrant and creative cultural life in communities across the country that reflects Canada's multicultural society and promotes a diversity of views and cultural expressions at home and abroad¹.

(Note: The $192 million announced in December 2004 included $20 million in internal reallocation that will be maintained for the years 2005-2006 to 2009-2010.)

¹ CANADA, Department of Finance, The Budget Plan 2005, Securing Canada's Social Foundations, Supporting Canada's Heritage, Support for Culture, 2005, PDF version, page 99
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CANADA, Department of Finance, The Budget Plan 2005, Securing Canada's Social Foundations, Supporting Canada's Heritage, Support for Culture, 2005, HTML version