Ontarians head to the polls on Thursday, June 2!

Below is an overview of the arts-specific commitments from the parties platforms as well as links to the full documents.

Green Party of Ontario 

Link to the full platform: https://files.ontariogreens.ca/platform/gpo-platform-2022-en-web.pdf  

Arts-relevant commitments include:  

  • Creating a stabilization fund for the nonprofit sector to ensure that nonprofits and charities can help rebuild the economy and communities.  
  • Affirming the arms-length operations of, and increasing investment in, the Ontario Arts Council and the Ontario Trillium Foundation.  
  • Reinstating support for the Indigenous Culture Fund. 
  • Expanding the Digital Main Street program to include nonprofit organizations and providing fulfilment platforms that better enable small, local businesses to compete with large online companies. 
  • Providing clear, in-depth guidelines and delivering more responsive, comprehensive support for Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act implementation to organizations through free, independent technical advice. 

 

Liberal Party of Ontario:  

Link to the full platform: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21948945/ontario-liberal-platform.pdf 

Arts-relevant commitments include: 

  • Restoring funding, grants, and donation matching for the arts and culture – fully implementing Ontario’s Culture Strategy (https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontarios-culture-strategy) 
  • Reintroducing the Indigenous Culture Fund 
  • Creating and protecting spaces to learn, be creative and play 
  • Investing $50 Million to build, purchase or refurbish performing art studios, visual arts galleries and event spaces, being sure that this includes more spaces to feature work from Black, Indigenous and other artists of colour 

 

New Democratic Party of Ontario 

Link to the full platform: https://www.ontariondp.ca/platform 

Arts-relevant commitments include: 

  • Creating a Provincial Arts Strategy that centres artists and supports arts, culture, and heritage community-based institutions committed to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion 
  • Increasing funding to the Ontario Arts Council: 
  • Restoring the Indigenous Culture Fund: 
  • Providing competitive tax credits for the province’s screen-based industries 
  • Improving the Ontario Computer Animation and Special Effects Tax Credit 
  • Increasing festival funding and working closely with performing artists and cultural workers to develop a recovery plan that gets the sector back on track 
  • Increasing funding for the Community Museum Operating Grant and review the outdated funding model for museums 
  • Increasing provincial funding for brick-and-mortar libraries and digital library services 
  • Prioritizing Ontario’s authors and publishers in school curricula to help promote local writers and bolster Ontario’s publishing industry. 

 

Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario 

 

Link to the full platform: The provincial budget introduced on April 28 (but not passed prior to the election call) has been referred to as a platform substitute. You can link to it here: https://budget.ontario.ca/2022/index.html 

Arts-relevant commitments: 

While the budget narrative referenced recent investments in arts infrastructure in Windsor and Brampton and the impact of screen-based and gaming industries tax credits, it also reveals a planned reduction in core Ministry of Heritage, Tourism, Sport and Culture Industries spending for 2022-23, as follows: 

2019-20: $904 million 

2020-21: $917 million 

2021-22 (projected): $976 million 

2022-23 (proposed): $871.2 million  

PASO’s policy and funding recommendations 

Over the past many months, the Ontario PASO Coalition has developed a series of provincial arts policy and funding recommendations, subsequently shared with policy teams from various Ontario political parties.  You can find PASO’s recommendations here:  https://www.paso-opsa.ca/news/