"The Harper government has shot another arrow into the side of Canadian culture," Wayne Grady, Chair of the Writers' Union of Canada, said today, referring to the announcement last Friday that the Conservatives are axing another arts-funding programme, this time the Department of Foreign Affairs, Industry and Trade's tremendously important PromArt.

PromArt was the fund to which writers, artists, musicians and other members of Canada's cultural industry could apply for funding to attend cultural events abroad for the purpose of promoting their work. Last year, the program provided $4.7 million to help 300 creators and creator agencies represent Canadian culture abroad.

In the field of literature alone, Grady adds, PromArt helped literary agents and publishers attend the Frankfurt, Guadalajara and London Book Fairs, where they were able to sell foreign rights to books published by their clients in Canada. It helped writers such as David Adams Richards, David Bergen, Flavia Cosma, Madeleine Thien and Michael Redhill conduct book tours in the United States and Europe. The fund also enabled the Association for the Export of Canadian Books to organize a travelling exhibition of Canadian-authored books that went on display in China, India, Korea, Spain, and Serbia and Montenegro.

The Writers' Union contends that these cuts are not simply fiscal in nature, as the Foreign Affairs department would have us believe, since studies have shown that every dollar invested in Canadian culture brings $10 into the Canadian economy; taxes alone replenish DFAIT's original investment. PromArt is therefore not an expenditure, it is an investment that realizes huge returns to federal and provincial coffers.

"At a time when Canadian art, music and literature are finally making huge inroads in the world outside our borders," says Grady, "when Canadian artists, musicians and writers are being invited to participate in more international conferences and festivals than ever before, government cuts to arts funding are making it harder and harder for Canadian creators to appear before their new, expanding audiences."

Such curtailments not only make it more difficult for Canadian artists to make living, Grady notes, but they also silence Canada's voice in the international cultural forum. As globalization threatens to turn the world into ever larger and more homogenized economic conglomerates, individual national cultures are becoming increasingly important ways of distinguishing between one country and another. "We need to strengthen our representation abroad," Grady says, "so that Canadian writers can make a decent living, and Canadian culture can take its place on the world stage."

The Writers' Union of Canada is our country's national organization representing professional authors of books. Founded in 1973, the Union is dedicated to fostering writing in Canada, and promoting the rights, freedoms, and economic well being of all writers. For more information, please visit www.writersunion.ca

- 30 -

For additional information
Deborah Windsor, Executive Director
The Writers’ Union of Canada
416. 703.8982 Ext. 221
dwindsor@writersunion.ca