An industrious PTBC worker bee named Christin did a little looking around and came up with this:
Joel,
I have been doing some research on the arts funding “cuts”. The media has made a big deal about the funding cut to PromArt……and that the Winnipeg Ballet won’t be able to travel anymore because they received (at some point) $40,000 to go to Europe and perform. I took a look at the website for the Winnipeg Ballet……They currently only have their Annual Report for 2006-2007 posted and it states that they had a surplus of $296,233 (http://www.rwb.org/press_room/pr092507.html). It doesn’t really seem to me like the Winnipeg Ballet is really hard up for any cash………of that surplus, $30,000 was being retained for “special projects”. I think that they can afford to travel on their own dime.
Hey I know: now that unions can’t legally finance their NDP’s election campaigns and all those Liberal-luvin’ corporations can’t legally finance the Liberal Party’s election campaigns anymore, maybe they should consider investing all those extra millions in spare cash financing the Royal Winnipeg Ballet—it’s a very a worthy cause!
Oh but the “investment” opportunities are endless. If they prefer, they could finance those “artists” who paint pictures of Jesus with elephant dung splashed all over the painting —for “artistic” purposes—and then hung in taxpayer-funded public art galleries; or they could help bankroll more of this for all of us in Canada—you know, for “unity” purposes: the “Piss Pope” exhibit at the publicly-funded Vancouver Art Gallery! Or say, support experimental electro-rock band Holy F_ck (actual fact—but I took the taxpayer-funded ‘u’ out for you). How about a repeat of the provincial art show which gave first prize to a drawing of the crucified Christ being sodomized by a priest? Or fund some more young urban gangsta rap groups that write songs about Bush being a war criminal and America being a source of evil?
No, I know: private funding is too radical. “Piss Pope” and “Holy F_uck” are moderate things.
Anyway, I checked out Christin’s work real quickly. Quote from the Royal Winnipeg Ballet site:
RWB Annual Report 2006-2007
RWB REPORTS SURPLUS
(Winnipeg, Manitoba – September 26, 2007) – Today, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s Chief Operating Officer Judy Murphy announced a surplus of $296,233 for the 2006/07 fiscal year. Of this surplus, $266,233 has been transferred to the building fund and $30,000 will be retained for future special projects.
During this season, the RWB was identified by the Canada Council as a key institution and was awarded $434,500 in supplemental funding.
[…]
More inconvenient facts:
…The promotional travel program the Conservatives are eliminating this year has included sponsorships such as a $550 grant to an Ontario filmmaker to present the short film Confessions of a Drag Queen at a gay and lesbian film festival in 2006.
The program gave another filmmaker $900 to present the film Peking Turkey at a gay and lesbian film festival in London, England, last year.
The program also funded trips by writer Gwynne Dyer and retired Supreme Court of Canada justice Michel Bastarache to travel to Cuba for speeches on Canadian foreign policy and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Several other artists and groups also received grants to travel to Cuba.
Other grants promoted seminars on corporate responsibility in South America and Central America, but dozens of grants for filmmakers, writers and performing artists were for trips to festivals and performances around the world.
And we know that’s all true because it came from an article at billion dollar per year taxpayer-funded, state-owned, state-run CBC (which relies for its programming on countless hundreds of millions of dollars worth of federally-funded “artists” and “art” to achieve its last-place —so low they’re nearly entirely off-the-charts—ratings.)
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PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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