TORONTO – Canadian stars Wendy Crewson, Sonja Smits, Tonya Lee Williams and Karl Pruner, gathered at Queen’s Park Thursday to push for urgent amendments to the Status of Ontario’s Artists Act.
“This Act makes a mockery of the term Status of the Artist,” Karl Pruner, ACTRA Toronto’s president said in a statement. “After years of hard work by the Culture Minister’s own sub-committee on Status of the Artist, all this empty Act contains is a weekend to celebrate artists.”
Actress Wendy Crewson called the Act “Vacuous” and said it’s “a sorry attempt by the government to check something off their to-do list before the next election. This Act doesn’t do the job.”
“We had high hopes when we met with the Culture Minister a year ago. This Act offers nothing more than platitudes. It does nothing to relieve the challenges faced by artists,” said actress Sonja Smits.
Actress and ReelWorld Film Festival founder Tonya Lee Williams said “artists are among the most underpaid workers in our economy and they are without many of the protections and benefits that other workers rely on.”
In the 2003 election, the Liberals promised to bring in Status of the Artist legislation to address these concerns. For the past three years, artists have been working with a special committee set up by the government to do extensive research on these issues.
The Act, as presented, acknowledges the substantial contribution of artists to the economic and social well being of the province, the statement said, but fails to provide any solutions to the challenges they face, and fails to include any of the Culture Minister.s own sub-committee’s recommendations on Status.
Ontario artists have been waiting for a Status of the Artist Act since UNESCO’s 1980 recommendation that governments take action for artists.
ACTRA is calling for legislative amendments that include protections for children, income averaging, training, housing support and a process to improve the collective bargaining process for artists.
