Defending what sustains us

On this Island, in a time that asks more of communities than ever, culture, language, gathering, and care are part of what must be defended. The provincial government’s Budget 2026–27 includes a 30 percent reduction to Arts Nova Scotia, alongside related cuts across Communities, Culture, Tourism and Heritage (CCTH). These changes sit within a broader $130 million in cuts across social programs, including supports for seniors, youth, mental health services, Mi’kmaw, Gaelic, and African Nova Scotian initiatives, Department of Natural Resources programming, equity and inclusion initiatives, recreation, and other public systems that sustain community life. The impact will be felt across Unama’ki, Cape Breton Island.

For organizations that receive annual operating funding through Arts Nova Scotia and CCTH, including Eltuek Arts Centre, the result is a 20 percent reduction in operating support, alongside significant decreases in project funding, grants to organizations and individual artists, and other programs.

Operating funding allows organizations, including Eltuek, to retain professional staff, pay artists fair wages and professional fees, contract local technicians, trades, and small businesses, and maintain consistent, free, and inclusive public programming. Project funding allows for the commissioning of new work, partnerships with schools and community groups, and programming that supports rural vitality and local employment. It keeps our tax dollars circulating here. It keeps people working here. When both streams are reduced at once, the consequences are structural.

Across Unama’ki, communities, culture workers, artists, volunteers, and cross-sector partners have spent decades building this infrastructure. It has required disciplined governance, innovation, long hours, advocacy, and sustained commitment.

When these cuts land simultaneously across the arts, Mi’kmaw, Gaelic, and African Nova Scotian initiatives, recreation, language programs, youth and seniors supports, and mental health services, the effect is cumulative. These are the spaces where identity is practiced, language is carried forward, young people gather, and communities build cultures of belonging and care. Reducing them simultaneously contracts the public life that anchors this Island.

Across-the-board cuts represent de-investment in cultural and civic infrastructure in Unama’ki. The impact will be visible in employment, income, youth and seniors programming, recreation, Mi’kmaw cultural work, Gaelic language revitalization, African Nova Scotian community leadership, and the vitality of our downtowns and rural centres.

Arts and culture intersect daily with tourism operators, small businesses, educators, youth services, social service providers, and municipal initiatives. The same individuals and organizations appear across these sectors as employers, collaborators, volunteers, board members, and community hosts. When pressure increases in one place, it travels. This is an interconnected ecosystem.

Eltuek Elder Ernest Johnson often reminds us that public decisions need to be defensible. Defensible to the people who live with them and make them. Defensible to the next generations. Defensible in light of our responsibilities to land, language, culture, and community. With reductions of this scale arriving all at once, it is reasonable to ask whether their long-term impact on community stability and participation meets that standard.

The provincial budget is framed as “Defending Nova Scotia.” Defence implies protecting what sustains us. Cultural and social infrastructure stabilize communities already managing demographic change, economic volatility, and social strain.

If we are serious about defending Nova Scotia, we must defend the interconnected public systems that allow communities like ours to endure and to contribute fully to the province’s future.

This issue requires sustained attention and a visible show of concern from citizens across this province.

The people and organizations affected are the same ones who show up across sectors, from youth programs to seniors supports, from newcomer services to community food initiatives, from festivals and recreation to housing and mental health services. They are the institutions and people who hold communities together. The impact of these reductions will reverberate across the civic, economic, and ecological life of Unama’ki, Cape Breton Island.

Stable, predictable public investment in arts and culture, youth and seniors supports, language and community initiatives, recreation, housing, food security, and mental health services forms part of the infrastructure of belonging, care, and regional resilience. That infrastructure deserves decisions that are defensible to all Nova Scotians.