Councils & Agencies

Canada Council for the Arts

The Canada Council for the Arts is Canada’s national, arm’s-length arts funding agency. Its main areas of activity are:  

• Grants: It provides funding to individual professional artists and arts organizations through a peer assessment process.
• Endowments and Prizes: Each year, the Canada Council awards fellowships and prizes to some 200 artists and scholars.
• Research, communications and arts promotion activities also further its mandate to support, promote and celebrate the arts. 

Canadian Heritage

Canadian Heritage is responsible for national policies and programs that promote Canadian content, foster cultural participation, active citizenship and  participation in Canada's civic life, and strengthen connections among Canadians.

Cultural Human Resources Council

The Cultural Human Resources Council (CHRC) brings together cultural workers and employers to address training, career development and other human resource issues. The cultural sector includes a labour force of over 600,000 and several thousand businesses and organizations – large, medium and small, not-for-profit and for-profit.

Through its volunteer Board of Directors and broad national network, CHRC works for and with all the cultural industries and arts disciplines in the cultural sector including the Live Performing Arts; Writing and Publishing; Visuals Arts and Crafts; Film, Television and Broadcasting; Digital Media; Music and Sound Recording; and Heritage. CHRC also works on cross-sector issues such as Cultural Management, Career Management and Export Marketing.

Ontario Arts Council

The Ontario Arts Council (OAC) is an arm's-length agency of the Ontario Ministry of Culture. OAC's grants and services to professional, Ontario-based artists and arts organizations support arts education, Aboriginal arts, community arts, crafts, dance, Franco-Ontarian arts, literature, media arts, multidisciplinary arts, music, theatre, touring, and visual arts. In 2009-2010, OAC funded 1,697 individual artists and 1,013 organizations in 236 communities across Ontario for a total of $51.8 million.

Ontario Media Development Corporation

Ontario Media Development Corporation (OMDC), an agency of the Ministry of Culture, is the central catalyst for the province’s cultural media cluster including book publishing, film and television, interactive digital media, magazine publishing and music industries.

OMDC promotes, enhances and leverages investment, jobs, and original content creation by:

1. contributing to the continued expansion of a business environment in Ontario that is advantageous to the growth of the cultural media industry and to the growth of new employment, investment and production opportunities in Ontario;
2. facilitating and supporting innovation, invention and excellence in Ontario ’s cultural media industry by stimulating creative production, format innovation and new models of collaboration among sectors of the cultural media industry;
3. fostering and facilitating co-operation among entities within the cultural media industry and between the public and private sectors to stimulate synergies in product development and the creation of products with original Canadian content;
4. assisting in the promotion and marketing of Ontario’s cultural media industry as a world-class leader;
5. administering provincial tax credit programs and such other programs and initiatives as may be required by legislation or a Minister of the Government of Ontario; and
6. acting as a catalyst for information, research and technological development in the cultural media industry provincially, nationally and internationally.

To help Ontario be recognized as a leading global jurisdiction to invest in, create, produce and enjoy original cultural media product.

Statistics Canada

Statistics Canada, a member of the Industry Portfolio, produces statistics that help Canadians better understand their country—its population, resources, economy, society and culture. In Canada, providing statistics is a federal responsibility. As Canada’s central statistical agency, Statistics Canada is legislated to serve this function for the whole of Canada and each of the provinces. Objective statistical information is vital to an open and democratic society. It provides a solid foundation for informed decisions by elected representatives, businesses, unions and non-profit organizations, as well as individual Canadians. In addition to conducting a Census every five years, there are about 350 active surveys on virtually all aspects of Canadian life.

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