Canadian Conservatives end funding for fringe arts groups

The National Post is reporting that Canada's Conservative government has axed a Can$4.7m 'PromArt' programme that sponsors often controversial arts as part of international visits:

"The cut is part of a government-wide review to trim spending, but the PromArt program became an easy target when senior Tories discovered that some recipients of taxpayer-funded foreign travel were "not exactly the foot that most Canadians would want to see put forward."

The recipients singled out by the Conservatives include: - $3,000 to Toronto-based experimental rock band Holy F---for a week-long tour of the United Kingdom. - $5,000 to former CBC broadcaster Avi Lewis, who now works for al-Jazeera and who is described in a Conservative memo as "a general radical," to help pay for his travel to film festivals in Australia and Argentina. - $16,500 to send Tal Bachman, a best-selling recording artist and the son of The Guess Who's Randy Bachman, to South Africa and Zimbabwe for music festivals.

"I think there's a reasonable expectation by taxpayers that they won't fund the world travel of wealthy rock stars, ideological activists or fringe and alternative groups," the source said."

This is only the latest move by Canadian Conservatives to end the ways in which Left-liberal groups have benefited hugely from taxpayer funding.  Stephen Harper's government has already defunded a range of leftist advocacy groups that grew fat under the previous Liberal governments.  It is also carefully including a range of more mainstream groups - particularly Christian, farming and hunting associations - that have never been seriously listened to by Ottawa's political establishment.  It is part of a coordinated attempt to reverse the Left's 'march through the institutions'.