Election 2006 Arts Platforms

As many of you know, the Canadian election is coming up on January 23 this month.

In the 2004 election, there was considerable interest (and a circulating email list of considerable size) that urged voters to consider what the arts and culture platforms of the various Canadian parties were. Although the platforms differed greatly, I was glad to see that the Liberal, NDP, Bloc, Green, and Conservative parties all mentioned these issues in varying degrees in their campaign sites.

This time around, I did the same research, with the intention of posting links to the various parties' arts agendas over the next few days. However, this time I noticed a shocking difference--I couldn't find any mention of specific arts and culture agendas on any of the party websites I visited this evening, with one exception, the Green Party.

So far, I am undecided in this election. But I hope that I am not alone in the belief that the arts are important in Canada and deserve to be mentioned in campaign literature the way they were in 2004. I will be emailing contact addresses of the various parties over the next few days and if they have anything of interest to say about the arts, I would be glad to broadcast that and link to relevant content.