The CBC can use some. Its almost complete preoccupation with revenue has affected its programming in the past decade. The Canada Council needs more. And much more is needed at the local level. But the arts community, if there is indeed such a thing, needs to keep itself at a greater distance from the government.
Much great art is subversive, anti-establishment.
It may need a hand to feed it, given the economic realities of the arts, but it should be prepared to bite that hand, frequently and hard. The arts may need the government, here as everywhere in the world, but they should not be clients of the government. Ask the owners of Canadian magazines, who are staring down the guns of globalization. Ask the independent book- store owners who are out of business. Ask even the proprietors of the biggest cultural institutions in the land, forced to grovel for corporate sponsorships.