Canada Council Releases Preliminary Report on COVID-19 Impacts

The following is excerpted from a communication issued by the Canada Council for the Arts.

To better understand the needs of the professional arts sector to overcome the COVID-19 crisis, the Canada Council for the Arts sent a survey to approximately 30,000 of its clients (artists, groups, organizations) on April 6, 2020.

Within 48 hours, more than 7,500 or 27% of respondents had replied.

The survey looked at the Government of Canada’s recently announced emergency aid measures for Canadian workers and businesses and the challenges faced by the professional arts sector.

The Council has prepared a preliminary report of the first quantitative results to give you a quick snapshot of the overall situation.

An analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data collected over the entire survey period by Forum Research Inc., to be published later, may shed further light on the situation.

Findings at a glance

  • 61% of all respondents said that the arts will get through the pandemic crisis with the support of the federal government’s emergency aid measures.

  • 43% of individual respondents said they had or would be applying to the Canada Emergency Response Benefit.

  • 41% of organizations said they had or would be applying to the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy.

  • 16% of respondents said they were planning to access the Canada Emergency Business Account.

  • No fields of practice supported by the Canada Council will be untouched by the crisis.

  • Certain aspects of the sector remain at risk (for example, organizations relying on self-employed professionals and organizations with high non-payroll fixed costs).

Read the preliminary quantitative report to understand the complexity of the challenges and the need for additional measures to help the not-for-profit arts and culture sector get through the pandemic crisis.

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