OTTAWA – To the shock and disbelief of thousands of actors, musicians, and arts administrators across the country, the CERB payments necessitated by the COVID-19 outbreak have provided Canada’s artists with sufficient governmental funding for the first time in Canada’s history.
30-year-old emerging actor Christine Millet could barely contain her enthusiasm about what the $2000 a month meant to her and others in her profession.
“Historically, the way Canadian artists got financial assistance is we all lined up on the steps of Parliament every morning and whoever was there that day threw pennies at us,” she explained. “CERB is the best thing to happen to the Canadian artistic community since the penny was discontinued and they started throwing nickels!”
Award-winning Artistic Director Theresa Greenwood was over the moon to receive more money than her professional theatre company had ever received in government assistance in its 20-year existence.
“It’s taken a century and half, but I finally see evidence of our government and its leaders realizing that the arts exist,” she enthused, happily paying off a tiny fraction of the debts she had incurred renting venues, paying actors, holding workshops, and organizing independent fundraisers. “Or at least evidence that they can’t legally exclude the artistic community from financial aid this time. What a win!”
Justin Trudeau took to the podium last week to praise the resilience of Canada’s artists in the face of decades of knowing the government couldn’t care less about them or their contributions to society.
“Canadians have always created incredibly moving and important art with passion, ingenuity, and a laughably tiny amount of government funding,” Trudeau explained. “But I’m proud to say that by simply acknowledging that artists need to eat and pay rent like normal human beings, my government has become the greatest patron of the arts our country has ever seen.”
In other artistic funding news, it was recently announced that the money taken from Ontario’s Indigenous Culture Fund last year was being reallocated to pay for an all-white male comedy troupe’s sketch revue about what it truly means to be Canadian.
