'Will the establishment finance the revolution?': Canadian arts advocacy groups, the federal government, and development of arts policies, 1963--1972

A founding principle in Canadian public interventions in the arts sector is that the government's ability to influence how its support is used should be limited. It could be expected that this principle might be grounded in, and thus reinforce a mutually respectful, if not cooperative relationship between the government and the organizations claiming to represent the sector. In practice, Canadian public policy-making addressing the arts has not always corresponded with these expectations. Between 1963 and 1972, in particular, public support was used to direct the activities of independent or semi-autonomous organizations concerned with the arts in Canada, and to advance public policy goals that at best indirectly related to the well-being of the Canadian arts sector.;This study examines the evolution of the objectives and behaviour of the Canada Council and the Canadian Conference of the Arts in the context of changing federal government goals and practices between 1963 and 1972, and seeks to assess the extent to which political goals intruded upon the operations and objective-setting of these organizations. Records of the Council's and the Conference's operations indicate that their operations and program were effectively re-shaped and re-oriented by federal intervention during the 1960s and early 1970s.;Between 1963 and 1972, federal interventions in the Canadian arts sector fundamentally changed. One aspect of this change is the evolution of the federal government's relationship to other prominent organizations active in the arts sector. Two of these leading groups are the Canada Council and the Canadian Conference of the Arts. The Canada Council was created in 1957 as a semi-autonomous federal agency to support the arts and letters through the interest on a public endowment. The Canadian Conference of the Arts (founded as the Canadian Arts Council) dates back to 1945 and is a voluntary advocacy agency representing arts groups across Canada. By the mid-1960s, the majority of both organizations' revenues were supplied through annual federal grants that were often tied to implicit or explicit conditions or directives regarding their use.