In a move sure to startle the British Columbia book and magazine industries, the Campbell government has slashed their support.
As reported on Thursday by CBC News and the Globe and Mail, the Arts and Culture Branch of the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and the Arts has cut funding from the Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia, the B.C. Association of Magazine Publishers, and BC BookWorld, a monthly newspaper about books published here.
According to the Globe and Mail, the ministry phoned the organizations on Tuesday:
“It's devastating,” says Margaret Reynolds, executive director of the ABPBC. Her organization has lost $45,000 in funding – out of a yearly $290,000 budget.
“It's a massive amount,” she says. “It's also demoralizing. You think you're in a sophisticated society and you find out that this is not actually the case, so it's very distressing.”
The ministry's own website on Thursday night had no mention of this, or any other event more recent than September 21.
Comments on the CBC and Globe and Mail websites were generally supportive of the cuts.
Crawford Kilian is a contributing editor of The Tyee.
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DPL
2 years ago
What will be cut next? I
What will be cut next? I shudder to think of who or what they will be putting the boots to next
bruther
2 years ago
CBC and Globe and Mail comments
I've looked at the comments supporting these cuts on the CBC and Globe and Mail sites. It only proves to me that Canadians are slowly but surely descending into a primitive, medieval mindset where the only thing that matters is what the local laird (aka Gordon Campbell) thinks. Our minds are getting smaller and smaller. Pretty soon all we'll be doing is farming potatoes in our backyards and listening to the royal jester tell us the latest, officially approved jokes on the evening news.
RicDay
2 years ago
Victoria chops support to book, magazine industries
The decision by the BC Government to cut these funds is stunning. Among Canada's three largest provinces, BC has long been the "weak sister" with Ontario and Quebec far more supportive of literacy, culture, and the arts. There has been at least some support from the government in this province, but what may remain after the further cuts between now and 2011 (reducing support for the arts by 90%), will place our province on a par with some of the central African nations where a literate population is considered a threat to those in power.
This government has already cut funding to school libraries and reduced the classroom count rather effectively; now it would seem to be intent on removing the creators of written arts from the province, because if the book and magazine publishers cannot publish here, the province's authors will have to look elsewhere. It would seem our provincial government would prefer a province in which the only reading and writing skills required are those needed to place an X in a box once every few years. Perhaps some of the funding canceled this week will be re-purposed, so we may be provided with helpers at polling booths, to tell us where to place those scrawled X's?
A suggestion to Mr Campbell and his cohorts: if you are not already learning from him, Robert Mugabe may well be available to consult on how a literate society may best be made illiterate within a single generation!
Sask Resident
2 years ago
Cuts to Magazines
Cutting in-province magazines that few, if any, people read has nothing to do with literacy. Since the government has a huge deficit, it has to make cuts to programs and raise taxes. Cutting a subsidy to an elite group is a good start. To improve literacy, get people to read. Illiterate people don't read a magazine for local book publishers.
Fiat lux
2 years ago
How about cutting funds to
How about cutting funds to the most elite and most corrupt sector, the multinational corporate mafia who now own and control BC, stripping it bare and taking out the benefits as a form of unilateral taxation without any benefits to the people ?
Should they get more taxcuts so they can steal and take out more?
Ed Deak.
morechatter
2 years ago
Read Any Good Books Lately?
You know on supporting local industry as I hear the paper backs are good or better yet the pay backs as the Liberals are more tuned into rich foreignors than Canadian Folks as have no problem starving their poor so government can feed rich foreignors who could careless if Canadian children are left to starve. As what is dished out at the local food bank is sad indeed as thankgiving dinner is outdated cookies and pretzels and a dented can of pasta sauce and white pasta to see their little ones through the week.
No stale bread for the holidays as BC kids are guranteed to be tomorrows amputees. It's what happened on the Reserves in Manitoba and its destenied to happen here as a steady diet of garbage takes it tole on the young and old alike and sick and disabled as malnutrition takes an arm or two for good measure.
Fiat lux
2 years ago
The main reason of
The main reason of starvation and pollution are the deregulated money creation powers of the banks, taking over the world with the perceived power of imaginary capital, licencing destruction by gross overcapitalization, using the fraudulent definitions of economic efficiency and the GDP as "wealth creation".
The Chinese, with 25,000 more new cars on their roads every day, apparently just invested $2. billion of worthless US dollars they have on stock, and intend to invest tenfold more, in the worst human made ecological disaster on Earth, the Alberta tar sands.
And our governments are rubbing their stupid little claws with glee about all that money coming in.
Our descendants and the younger people of today will pay a heavy price for this legalized crime wave.
Ed Deak.
biscotti
2 years ago
Clear cutting culture
I have to wonder if Sask Resident has ever read a copy of BC Bookworld or has any clue at all about the many complex relationships between writing, publishing, reading and culture.
BCBW has been an excellent, informative publication since its inception and I would lament its demise.
Ed Deak is right about who the real elites are. These cuts are in large part the price of reducing their taxes.