By Matthew Vadum ——Bio and Archives--September 17, 2008
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While pooping puffins and sweater vests have made headlines during this year’s election campaign, Canada’s arts community says one important issue has been conspicuously absent: arts funding. So, frustrated with a lack of accountability over $45 million in recent arts cuts and a low profile for the arts so far in the campaign, theatre organizer Keith Barker decided to do something. Last week, the veteran Toronto actor started a Facebook group asking for people “who believe in arts” to leave their photos blank. “Within 48 hours, we had 2,000 members,” said Barker in a telephone interview with CTV.ca, adding he wants to “mobilize people” and make arts funding an election issue. If all the world’s a stage, then Facebook is a perfect platform for the protest. As of Monday afternoon, more than 9,000 people had joined up and photos were vanishing from profiles across the country. “I think it just gets people talking about arts and culture,” said Barker, who also works with Toronto’s Native Earth theatre group.Not surprisingly, Canadian writer Naomi Klein is helping to lead the fight against the funding reduction. In a fit of elitist hyperbole, at a rally for a socialist party (NDP) candidate in Guelph, Ontario, the Marxist crusader called government arts funding “the oxygen of democracy.” (Klein is married to Avi Lewis, an America-hating journalist who was recently humiliated by Ayaan Hirsi Ali in a television interview. Lewis couldn’t believe that Ali actually liked the United States.)
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Matthew Vadum, matthewvadum.blogspot.com, is an investigative reporter.
His new book Subversion Inc. can be bought at Amazon.com (US), Amazon.ca (Canada)
Visit the Subversion Inc. Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter.