Well, it must be a reeeeally slow news week, because Sun Media has resumed its campaign of faux outrage against SummerWorks. The tabloid chain has had it in for Toronto's indie theatre festival ever since it dared to include a play about the arrest and trial of "Toronto 18" terrorist Shareef Abdelhaleem in its line-up last summer. The angle of attack has been: Your tax dollars are supporting theatre that sympathizes with terrorists! (The play in question, needless to say, was not actually sympathetic towards terrorism.)
Over the weekend, Sun Media national bureau chief David Akin broke the big news – stop the presses! – that SummerWorks artistic producer Michael Rubenfeld once filed a grant application late. Shocking, I know: artists never have trouble meeting deadlines, isn't that right, Julie Taymor?
The reason this bit of trivia is thought newsworthy by Sun Media is that SummerWorks received the grant it applied for from the Department of Canadian Heritage *even though* the application was late. Or, as Akin put it in typically nuanced Sun-ese: "Bureaucrats bent over backwards to bend the rules and shovel federal cash to a Toronto theatre festival that staged a sympathetic play about a terrorist who wanted to blow up downtown Toronto."
This is no doubt the first time "bureaucrats" have ever been described as bending over backward to help anyone in a Sun Media publication. But rather being lauded for their limberness, the government employees in question are assailed by Akin under the assumption that when a bureaucracy does not behave bureaucratically something nefarious must be going on.
What exactly the folks at Canadian Heritage did wrong is hard to ascertain from the article. They seem to stand accused of helping Rubenfeld fill out forms correctly and reminding him of deadlines, two things I'm pretty sure are a part of their job. Also, one Canadian Heritage arts consultant appears to be charged with the crime of liking the SummerWorks festival, attending it and thinking it worthy of funding as if there's some sort of conflict of interest in that. I think the real scandal would be if Canadian Heritage was funding festivals that its arts consultants thought were terrible...
Akin's report seems particularly focused on some official Canadian Heritage correspondence – obtained by him through to the Access to Information laws – that appears to have been backdated "so it would look like the [SummerWorks] festival was playing by the same rules every other group had to observe." While its refreshing to see a Sun Media report standing up for groups applying for what they usually call "taxpayers' money" or "handouts", I have a sneaking suspicions that fairness in grant-giving is not their real concern.
Now, look: I don't know enough about the inner workings of the Department of Canadian Heritage to know if this alleged backdating is an allowed practice. But then close readers should realise by this point that Sun Media doesn't either. In his article, Akin hedges by writing that rules were "bent" rather than broken.
Nevertheless, Heritage minister James Moore is investigating the allegations, as seems entirely proper.
The idea that someone might ended up fired over this, right before Christmas, however, is truly troubling.
As far as I'm concerned, the Canadian Heritage bureaucrats involved – rule benders or not – should be commended for being flexible about their deadlines in this case – and I really hope they have the prerogative to be in situations like this.
As Rubenfeld wrote in an email Sun Media obtained during its Access to Information fishing expedition, "Without our possible Heritage [Canada] grant we would have to severely cut our programming, leaving the festival in very real jeopardy for this, our 20th anniversary year."
It's here that this blown-out-of-proportion brouhaha does highlight a real issue in the arts community: All too often it's organizations that are already funded well enough to hire grant writers that have easier access to funding.
At the time of the correspondence in question, SummerWorks had only one year-round employee: artistic producer Michael Rubenfeld. His festival is a bare-bones organisation that really stretches the little public funding it gets and invests primarily in the creation of art rather than in administration.
Instead of penalizing the hundreds of artists showcased at the festival due to an overworked artistic producer's administrative lapse, the Department of Canadian Heritage accepted SummerWorks' late application and took the opportunity to encourage the festival to evolve their infrastructure.
Writes Rubenfeld in an email: "We have since done that, hiring a second year-round employee and have the Department of Canadian Heritage to thank for helping us develop and grow as an institution."
See, Sun Media has got it completely wrong. The case of Canadian Heritage and the SummerWorks grant isn't a scandal at all – it's a good news story, one about a government department doing what it is supposed to do without behaving like a faceless bureaucracy.
For those of you unfamiliar with it, the SummerWorks festival is not a "terror play producer" as the Sun's headline writers deride it. It is one of the most significant theatre festivals in Canada, where artistic directors from across the country comes to shop for exciting new work. Productions and play that began life at SummerWorks will soon be seen at the Canadian Stage Company and the Soulpepper Theatre Company, while others showcased at the festival are currently planning cross-country tours.
As Rubenfeld put it to me in an email: "We are not funded because we make a deadline. We are funded because the Department of Canadian Heritage believes in the SummerWorks Festival." I, for one, am glad that it does.