COVID-19 pandemic triggers social, economic devastation among Canada’s cultural workers

James Clayton

In contrast with the hundreds of billions it was able to pull out of its back pocket for banks and profitable corporations virtually overnight in March 2020, the Trudeau government took an entire year to find a miserable $181 million to alleviate the situation in the performing arts sector. Competition for these totally inadequate grant funds will be fierce.

Claire told us, “We have been writing grants, looking for help, via the Ontario Arts Council and Department of Canadian Heritage. There is emergency funding through the Ontario Arts Council and Canadian Heritage. Grants are out for live-streaming equipment. But that cannot replace live theatre or the energy in a live performance. That is the heart of the performing arts. I’m glad that live streaming can happen, but that just cannot compare to the collective euphoria of an audience of strangers sitting together and experiencing a work of beauty, together.”

Much of the actual funds for live-streaming equipment will find their way into the coffers of technology corporations, not artists.

The meagre funds the Trudeau government has allotted will not be distributed equally to cultural workers but rather in a highly unequal manner, along unofficial networks of patronage that have been built up over years by the system of official arts funding in Canada, the provinces and territories. Most cultural workers will receive not a single cent. These programs will not remove artists from the pressures of the capitalist market but form an intrinsic component of intensified market discipline.

Elgin Theatre, Toronto

The psychological stress of isolation and an uncertain future, which is the direct product of the ruling elite’s complete indifference to the plight of the arts, is taking its toll on artists. Brooke relates, “One of the things you lose when you’re not working in the theatre is that it’s a collective process. It’s a social process. Actors work together, and it’s the dynamic that comes out of that which creates the energy of the piece, and not having that ... you lose a part of yourself. The loneliness is a big problem.”

The mental health crisis faced by all workers is unprecedented. As the artists who talked to the WSWS emphasized, the arts themselves are a major contributor to the spiritual and mental uplift of the whole of society in times of crisis. Claire noted, “Where did people go for comfort and sustenance, in terms of mental health? They went to the arts. Music, Netflix, movies, film.”

But who will provide spiritual “comfort and sustenance” for workers in tomorrow’s crisis, if half of today’s cultural workers are driven into destitution? Never mind that Canadian imperialism is working overtime to ensure that “tomorrow’s crisis” is a catastrophic war with Russia and China which could easily destroy world civilization itself.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fact that the capitalist system is not capable of advancing human culture. It is an enormous dead weight preventing such advancement and, through its promotion of militarism and all forms of political reaction, threatening the cultural achievements of the past.