There is always stuff going on at Equity and often not enough time to let everyone know what we’ve been up to. But there are a couple of recent initiatives that I want to highlight.

So, first, on the government side...

Ontario: We sent out information before the holidays to let you know that we have been actively involved in two private member's bills tabled before the Ontario legislature. One of the bills (to create a tax credit for live performance similar to the one that exists for film and television production) stems from a discussion I had with MPP Peter Tabuns about initiatives we were trying to undertake at the Federal level. The second bill (to allow artists to average their income over several years, to exempt any government grants from income tax and to exempt the first $30,000 of revenue earned from copyright and/or royalties from income tax) would have an impact far beyond the Equity membership and benefit everyone in the arts and culture sector. We are working on a lobbying strategy for the next few weeks to try to get the McGuinty government to at least explore these two ideas by sending the bills to second reading.

On January 19, 2010 there was a cabinet shuffle, and a new Minister of Culture, The Hon Michael Chan, was appointed. This always means that all the various organizations have to educate "the new guy" about the key issues facing their constituents. In any case, you can read our submission to the Ontario government pre-budget consultation on our website.

Federal: When Parliament was prorogued, all bills on the order paper were automatically killed. However, Bill C-56, the "Fairness for the Self-Employed Act" was passed before the House session ended. The arts community has long lobbied for these benefits which offer self-employed Canadians the opportunity to participate in maternity, parental, sickness and compassionate care benefits available through the Employment Insurance program.
As the bill went into effect February 1, more details on how exactly the program will work are now available.

•	Service Canada media release

•	Employment Insurance Benefits for Self-Employed People

We'll keep an eye on this program and pass on any practical information that becomes available. As you prepare your 2009 tax returns, if you anticipate accessing these benefits, you should talk to your accountant about what the cost to you on your tax return will be.

British Columbia: Oh dear… what the !@(#$%^&* are they thinking cutting arts and culture grants like that? Despite the hue and cry from the community, the government appears to be deaf to the pleas to restore the funding and immune to the arguments as to what the long term damage to the community and the province will be. Despite that, we are not giving up and B.C. members will find a set of postcards in their issue of "EQ Magazine" to send in to a variety of government officials registering their protest. The letter I sent to the Premier and various Ministers didn't receive much more than a slightly irritable response that times were tough and they were going to go ahead and make the decisions they felt they had to make. In the meantime, the Olympics are (as usual) creating a certain amount of controversy. Whatever your personal opinion is on the Olympics and their validity or relevance, it seems to me to be utterly inappropriate and flat out unfair to pit artists against athletes in a competition for resources. I guess we'll all see what the fallout from this is but I am very, very concerned about the sustainability of a healthy and growing community in the face of the enormous budget cuts the government is proposing.

Senior Artists Reseach Project: I also want to update you on the Senior Artists Research Project (SARP) which I first told you about in a previous Notebook. The guilds, associations and unions representing artists across all disciplines have been working together for some time now on this project. In the fall, our members over 65 were sent a (big fat) survey to fill out which asked questions ranging from how much of their annual income was earned from their artistic practice to what services they would most like to receive that they don’t have now. Collected and analyzed by Hill Strategic Research, nearly 2000 surveys were returned – a massive response rate and one that assures us of very accurate information. I have read the "top line" results and have already seen a couple of things expressed which we at Equity could consider looking in to. We expect to receive the first draft of the report at the end of February and as soon as the final report is complete, we will make it available to all our members. Whatever other information the survey provides to us both for the Project and as a community, I was genuinely moved to see the huge percentage of people who said that if they could do it all over again, they would still be an artist.

I wonder how many other people in other professions would respond the same way if asked the same question...

All the best,