e-2818 Culture and heritage
Laurel Collins
Canada Emergency Response Benefit,COVID-19,Funds,Music and musicians,Pandemic
October 31, 2020, at 11:14 a.m. (EDT)
Petition to the House of Commons
  Whereas:
  
    Many of Canada’s musicians face extinction;
    Canada’s musicians, their sound and technical support workers and the Canadian live music industry will be one of the last sectors of the economy to recover from the pandemic;
    Without income from performances, many of our established musicians will be forced to leave music as a career, and young musicians will never get a start;
    Canadian professional musicians perform on average 96 times a year, but according to a national survey by Music Canada, the average number of bookings for the rest of 2020 is only eight with more than half of the musicians having zero performances booked, and bookings so far for 2021 are already lower than usual;
    Digital streaming is not a substitute for live performances, and research from Abacus Data shows that most Canadians want to get back to enjoying live music, including 89% of Canadians who attend live music events regularly; and
    While there are several targeted economic supports to the parts of the music industry from FACTOR, Canada Council for the Arts, and provincial bodies, they are a patchwork of support for the Canadian music ecosystem and there are few programs that assist musicians directly.
  
  
    We, the undersigned, residents of Canada, call upon the House of Commons to:
    1. Guarantee CERB funding or its equivalent for musicians and technical supporters until the summer of 2021;
    2. Fund and extend the music ecosystem support models such as SoundON from British Colombia across the country; and
    3. Create project funds that go directly to musicians for developing music content through virtual platforms.