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Canadians will head to the ballot boxes on April 28 to cast their votes in the 2025 federal election.
Ahead of election day, Classic 107 is attempting to answer the question of where each of the major political parties representing Manitobans stand on arts and culture issues.
Arts are certainly central to the life of Jorge Requena Ramos, the NDP candidate for Winnipeg South Centre. A filmmaker, musician, and the artistic director of the West End Cultural Centre, he sees the arts as a representation of the multi-faceted, multi-cultural tapestry of Canada that needs to be preserved.
“Arts and culture are super important to us,” he said in an interview on Morning Light, noting that the party’s platform addresses the arts in its Keeping Canada Canadian section.
Read the full party platform here.
A key part of this section of the NDP’s platform is a commitment to maintain core cultural institutions such as the Canada Cultural for the Arts and the National Film Board. Ramos notes that these institutions help to preserve Canadian identity and culture for generations.
“People don’t normally think during their regular day that the things that we’re going to be remembered for as a society... is the art that we leave behind,” Ramos explains. “Like, we know about the Renaissance because the 16th century, 17th century Italian painters and sculptors left us a body of work that represented the things that had happened during the enlightenment. And when we go through an enlightenment, one of the things that shines brightest is art. And so, in the NDP we recognize that those things that make us Canadian are important to build.”
Ramos notes that public arts funding is a necessary investment in the face of looming economic hardships and threats foisted on Canada by the United States in recent months. “Some of the artistic practices that we fund would very likely disappear if we didn’t continue to fund them as a government,” he says. “Canadian content is a thing that many people have hummed and hawed about, but it’s necessary for us to be able to describe ourselves. And we live next to a cultural juggernaut that has billions and billions of dollars pumped into industries. And if we don’t continue to chisel out our own work and prioritize our own work as Canadians, we’re going to lose our identity as Canadians.”
Many of the commitments the NDP is making to support the arts are similar to those being offered by the Liberal Party in their platform. Ramos says that the key differentiator between the two parties and their approaches to the arts and culture portfolio is a community-based approach.
“Freedom through community is the way that the NDP does things,” says Ramos, “and we believe that art is a very important part of that community feeling.”
“[Liberal leader Mark] Carney is a financial guy,” he continues. “He’s coming in from finances and he probably thinks pragmatically with money in his brain first. But that’s not going to be good for arts institutions. Arts institutions need to be protected because they’re the right thing to have because they’re what make us Canadian. They are going to cost money, but they’re also going to give hundreds and thousands of jobs.”
Beyond the economic case that the NDP makes for supporting the arts, Ramos also says that the arts will be key for keeping Canadian morale high in an uncertain future. “If we’re going to be able to keep our chin up during this trade war... we are going to do much better as Canadians as long as we can stay together and as long as we can stay Canadian, as long as the Canadian identity is something that we can find pride in.”
Classic 107 has requested interviews with all of the political parties currently representing Manitoba on the federal level about their plans for the arts and culture sector. At publication time, the Conservative Party has not responded to repeated requests for comment on their platform’s arts and culture plans.