Will newly pledged arts and culture funding meet northern needs?

The new federal budget proposes funding for arts, heritage and recreation in Canada to the tune of $4 billion over five years, but some members of the NWT arts community are unsure what that means for the North.

“It’s nice to see money in arts and culture after there hasn’t been lots of money in arts and culture, so I’m willing to go into it with an optimistic eye,” Sara Komarnisky, associate director of the NWT Art Centre Initiative, told Cabin Radio.

That said, it isn’t clear to Komarnisky how exactly the funding will impact northern artists.

For example, Budget 2026 proposes $20 million over three years for the Canada Council for the Arts – but NWT MP and Crown-Indigenous relations minister Rebecca Alty, who appeared at the Yellowknife Visitor Centre on Thursday to promote arts funding in the budget, said there is no specific carve-out for the North.

Even so, Alty said the funding “is above and beyond what’s currently allocated, so we’re able to support more artists.”

In the past, some northern organizations have described difficulty receiving funding from the Canada Council for the Arts or cuts in annual grants.

Highlighting another budget commitment, Mary Buckland, vice-president of the Yellowknife Artist-Run Community Centre, noted Ottawa is proposing $60 million over four years toward travelling exhibits and digital access to National Gallery of Canada resources.

“But when we’re talking about communities with very limited infrastructure to do exhibitions, very little security around that, no administrative capacity to apply on those things – how are those northern communities actually going to access those resources?” Buckland asked.

Resources and capacity are an ever-present barrier in the North, said Jess Dunkin, an NWT Recreation and Parks Association employee and co-producer of the podcast How I Survived.

Speaking at Alty’s press conference, Dunkin gestured to the visitor centre exhibit surrounding them, which features artwork made by survivors and intergenerational survivors of residential and day schools.

“This show will be up for another couple weeks here in Yellowknife, and then we would love for it to travel,” Dunkin said.

While Fort Smith’s museum has paid staff who can collaborate to host this kind of exhibit, Dunkin said her group has “had a lot of trouble connecting with other communities, and that’s not for a lack of an interest in the show, which represents artists from across the NWT.”

“There needs to be more investment in both the physical spaces, but also the people that are administering these spaces,” she said.

“We’d love to take this exhibit to Inuvik, for instance. We have, I think, four Inuvialuit artists that are represented in the exhibit, but there isn’t a space in Inuvik that is secure.”

The budget also announced “the government’s intention to consult with Canadians and the cultural sector” on creating a credit that would provide tax relief on the first $45,000 in net business income an artist generates.

Alty emphasized that one of Ottawa’s big-ticket items, the productivity mega deduction – 40 percent of which will flow to oil, gas and mining companies, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives – is available to all sectors, including arts and tourism.

“When it comes to the arts and culture and storytellers, being able to purchase professional cameras, kilns, recording and sound equipment, high-performance cameras, and more, there’s up to 100 percent that can be deducted right away,” Alty said.

Tourism companies purchasing new charter buses or new hotel beds are also eligible for the productivity mega deduction, Alty said.

To celebrate Canada’s 160th anniversary, Budget 2026 proposes a new $300-million fund to support “signature experiences” ranging from Heritage Minutes to the Trans Canada Trail.

It also includes $10 million for the Building Communities through Arts and Heritage program and $15 million for the Canada Arts Presentation Fund to support local festivals and performing arts events. For example, Yellowknife’s 20th Old Town Ramble & Ride Festival received funding in 2026 from the Building Communities through Arts and Heritage program.

The headline $4-billion figure includes $134 million for the Local Journalism Initiative and $300 million over two years for CBC/Radio-Canada.

Asked if now is a difficult economic climate in which to make the case for arts funding, given pressure on Canadian finances from the trade war and fuel price shocks, Buckland said the difficulty lay in how ready some people are “to internalize artistic value.”

“There’s so much that art can do for a community with regards to presenting the culture of the place and the people,” she said.

“Housing is an issue we need to resolve, but housing means nothing if we’re not living in a place that we can talk about and share about in a really valuable way that joins community together.”

Komarnisky said now is the time to illuminate things that bring people joy, “things that give them peace, things they find healing in.”

“If you think about what those things are, they’re probably elements of creative work, right? And so now more than ever, don’t we need those things?” she asked. “I think so.”