This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Legal Live Business
New Canadian laws mean extra expenses for overseas artists
By Aly Barchi | Published on Friday 30 August 2013
Promoters in Canada have hit out at recent changes in the rules governing foreign workers in the country which will make it much more expensive to put non-Canadian talent on stage in small bar and coffee shop-type venues.
Effective since late July, the new rules from Canada’s Ministry Of Employment, Social Development & Multiculturalism, reports the Calgary Herald, increase the bureaucratic costs of bringing in and staging overseas artists in small venues by up to fourfold. Specifically, any venue with a primary business that isn’t music (coffee shops, bars etc) will be charged increased application fees per musician (this also applies to any members of their management/crew travelling with them) and an extra work permit fee.
Spencer Brown, booker at Calgary haunt The Palomino, says the changes came without warning, and are “anti arts and culture” and “anti small business”.
He adds: “If I have a one four-member American band at the Palomino, I’m looking at CAN$1700 just to get them on the bill – and that’s on top of paying out a sound tech, paying for posters, gear rental, paying the other bands, staffing. Concert promotion at this level is, in itself, a high-risk occupation. So this has just put it through the roof. There’s no way to start already $1700 in the hole and break even. It’s impossible”.
The government agencies at the heart of it all, Employment And Social Development Canada and Citizenship And Immigration Canada, state that the new laws will “ensure that owners and managers of those types of establishments look to hire Canadians first before hiring temporary foreign workers”, adding that “musicians in a band performing several tour dates in Canada and musicians and buskers coming to Canada to perform in festivals” will be exempt from the additional charges, the main stipulation being they don’t play in bars and restaurants.
An independent petition against the extra fees is viewable here.
