Budget 2024 – Live Performance Receives a Significant Boost, with an Expiry Date

The 2024 federal budget tabled by the Honourable Chrystia Freeland yesterday included good news for the touring and presenting sector.
 
Budget 2024 proposes to provide $31 million over two years, starting in 2024-25, to the Department of Canadian Heritage for the Canada Arts Presentation Fund (CAPF) to help support organizations that professionally present arts festivals or performing arts series. Budget 2024 – Fairness for every generation
 
This is nearly double the current supplementary funding that has been provided to the program since 2019—from $8 million per year, the program will now receive $15.5 million per year. While substantial and essential, this funding expires in two years time, providing immediate relief but not predictable stable funding, which is what the sector needs. 
 
This funding will benefit nearly 1,600 organizations in every province and territory. It will also contribute to sustaining 78,000 cultural jobs. 
 
“We would like to thank the government for this significant boost to the CAPF program and the support it brings to presenters across the region and the country,” said Laurie Gillis, Executive Director of the Atlantic Presenters Association (APA). “The two-year limit on the funds means that we need to continue to advocate for the live performing arts sector and work with our government partners to do what we can to make this investment permanent going forward.”
 
The APA is thankful for the work and support of the 30 member #FutureOfLive coalition that has worked diligently advocating on behalf of the live performing arts sector. Their leadership united our voices, making a real impact on the budget and in the halls of government.

About the #FutureOfLIVE

The #FutureOfLIVE coalition is a collective of 35 performing arts, presenting, festival and music industry associations. Together, they advocate for predictable and increased funding for performing arts presenting organizations and festivals. The #FutureOfLIVE campaign began in October 2022 and ran right up until the 2024 federal budget. The campaign generated engagement from individual organizations in every province and it rallied support from MPs of all political allegiance. It also received media attention from 21 newspapers, 13 radio broadcasters, and 4 television broadcasters/online news sites.

About the live performance sector

• The live performance domain contributed $3.6 billion to the Canadian Gross Domestic Product in 2023. In constant dollars, this is essentially the same as in 2019 (-0.1%).
• The live performance domain accounted for 78,000 jobs in 2023.This is 3.3% more than in 2019.

Source: Statistics Canada, Table 36-10-0652-01 National culture and sport indicators by domain and sub-domain. Release date: 2024-04-15. Calculations by CAPACOA.