QUILLBLOG

Tories cancel cultural travel grants

From the Toronto Star:

The federal government has scrapped a travel assistance program to promote Canadian culture abroad, suggesting it catered to fringe groups, the well-off and left-wingers.

The decision yesterday to cancel the $4.7 million program offered by Department of Foreign Affairs effective March 31, 2009, drew sharp rebuke from critics, with one calling it yet another example of censorship by the government.

[...]

Gwynne Dyer, who received $3,000 to give lectures in Canadian foreign policy and defence issues in Cuba in March 2007, was described as a “left-leaning columnist and author who has plenty of money to travel on his own.”

In another case, the North-South Institute received $18,000 to help co-ordinate a Caribbean-Cuban conference in Havana in December 2006. The institute was described as a “left-wing anti-globalization think tank.

“Why are we paying for these people to attend anti-western conferences in Cuba?” the anonymous author asked.

Former CBC journalist Avi Lewis, now a reporter with Al Jazeera, was described a “general radical” who could easily afford to travel on his own dime.

A production company, Klein Lewis Productions, co-owned by him and his wife, Naomi Klein, an author and social activist, received a grant of $3,500 to promote the film The Take at films festivals in New Zealand and Australia.

“Klein has sold millions of books, and certainly does not need $3,500 from the government of Canada,” the note stated.

The issue of whether Dyer or Lewis could have paid their own way is irrelevant – although, okay, they probably could have – this is just more pettiness and narrow-minded ideological puritanism from a government that seems to be staffed entirely with cranky AM radio hosts.

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