According to a pair of New Brunswick arts associations, the COVID-19 pandemic further exposed the ways in which the province’s arts and culture sector needs to improve.
According to federal numbers released by the provincial government Thursday, New Brunswick shed the fewest jobs in the sector of any province, with losses for 2019-20 at 3.8 per cent. The GDP provided by the sector fell 1.7 per cent, which was also the lowest among provinces.
The province believes that targeted programs to help artists perform or showcase their work online helped to soften the blow as the virus shuttered gathering spaces across the province.
“The simple reality is we just haven’t lost as many of these important jobs to that sector as other provinces have,” said Tammy Scott-Wallace, New Brunswick’s minister of tourism, heritage and culture.
But some are left wondering if the rosy numbers may be partially due to the lagging health of the sector prior to the pandemic.
“We already have a tiny workforce, tinier than we should have, so maybe our workforce is already the skeleton crew of cultural workers,” said Julie Whitenect, executive director of ArtsLink NB.
A report from ArtsLink NB in 2019 showed that the province’s arts and culture sector was lagging behind the rest of the country. New Brunswick had the lowest per capita GDP contribution from the arts industry of any province in the country in 2017. The province was second last when it came to the number of people employed by the sector per capita.
“We are significantly lower than where we should be,” Whitenect said.
The job loss numbers released by the province only account for the early days of the pandemic, running until the end of March. It wasn’t until March 19 that much of the province shut down when a state of emergency was declared. Due to the nature of the work being done by those in the industry, it can be difficult to measure the impact in job loss numbers
“The sector was really affected,” said Victoria Hutt, the board chair of Arts NB.
“Artists aren’t salaried workers. They’re self-employed, gig workers, they’re going from contract to contract. Even demonstrating that loss of income was difficult because it’s contracts that never got made instead of a contract that fell through.”
Jean-Pierre Caissie, the executive director of Arts NB, said that the longer the pandemic went on, the more people left the industry. Now, as it looks to rebound, there’s a shortage of skilled workers.
“Artists are ready to work on stage and the people, the public is coming out to see shows but there are no technicians to run the show,” he said.
Overall, the pandemic has shown a need to re-evaluate how artists and culture workers are treated in the broader workforce.
“There’s things you can expect in other sectors like having EI, maternity leave or being able to do your work in a full-time capacity and not fit it into evenings around another job, to provide that security,” Hutt said.
Last year the Report on the Status of the Artist in New Brunswick was released, which detailed a number of issues faced by artists. Prime among its recommendations was to increase the median earnings of artists to the Canadian average and ensure the social safety net enjoyed by other workers in the country is extended to them.
Scott-Wallace said the province is committed to working with the federal government to implement some of the changes suggested in the report.