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October 31, 2007
NEW MINISTER OF CULTURE
On October 30, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty announced his new
cabinet, and appointed Aileen Carroll as Ontario's Minister of Culture.
The Ministry of Culture will remain a stand-alone ministry. Ms.
Carroll was recently elected MPP for Barrie and is a former federal
cabinet minister. She also holds responsibility for seniors.
Aileen Carroll, Minister of Culture
Aileen Carroll was elected to the Ontario legislature in 2007.
Carroll began her career in politics as a Barrie City councillor.
She then ran federally and was elected as a member of Parliament
for Barrie in 1997. She was re-elected in 2000 and again in 2004.
Carroll served as the Minister for International Cooperation, making
her Barrie's first, and only, federal cabinet minister.
Carroll chaired community fundraising projects for the Barrie Public
Library and St. Joseph's High School. She was honorary chair for
the Barrie United Way, a volunteer at Hospice Simcoe and a founding
member of Barrie's Big Sister Association.
Carroll is a graduate of St. Mary's and York universities, and
co-owned a manufacturing and retail business in Barrie for many
years. She and her husband Kevin Carroll, Q.C., have two adult children.
Laura Albanese, Parliamentary Assistant to Minister of
Culture
Laura Albanese was elected to the Ontario legislature in 2007.
Before joining government, Albanese was an anchor and producer of
Italian language news programming on OMNI Television. Albanese has
volunteered with organizations such as the Easter Seals Society,
the Canadian Cancer Society, Sick Kids Foundation, Villa Charities
and the Caritas Project.
Albanese immigrated to Canada from Italy. She has lived in the
York South-Weston community for over 25 years. She is married with
two children.
During the recent Ontario election, the Liberals outlined a comprehensive
cultural platform outlined in the document, The Ontario Liberal
Plan for Creative People, Prosperous Province, 2007
Highlights of the plan are:
Over the next four years,
Creating Vibrant Communities
Promoting cultural centres
- Provide municipalities with the funds, knowledge and tools to
help develop
their unique cultural creative industries.
- Support organizations that strengthen community arts programs,
such as the
Municipal Cultural Planning Partnership, through an annual investment
of $5
million.
Maintaining and rebuilding cultural infrastructure
- Revitalize local arts and culture through a three-year, $40 million
cultural capital program. This program will help municipalities
provide
artists with space to do their work.
- Increase support for museums and heritage preservation through
an annual
$650,000 investment.
- Enable our museums to engage new ideas and technology through
an annual $2
million investment that will make history more accessible and tangible
to
Ontarians.
- Develop libraries as a community hub of technology and recorded
knowledge
and support the implementation of new technology through a $13 million
investment over four years. This funding will also provide librarians
with
new resources such as consultation, training and development.
Stimulate economic development, research and innovation
- Create a new fund to further promote and develop new media content
creation in Ontario. The fund will focus on the creation of new
and original
content for mobile and online platforms.
- Assist publishing industries, including books and magazines,
to implement
the digitization of their creative content.
- Invest $50 million annually to increase the film and television
tax
credits and provide support for producers at the start of a production.
- Extend and increase funding to the Ontario Media Development
Corporation
for the Entertainment and Creative Cluster Partnerships Fund by
$12 million
over four years
Supporting youth and the arts
- Support evidence based programs that are led by youth, or focus
on
marginalized youth through the $1 million per year ARTSPIRE fund.
Support the cultural renaissance
- Create a $15 million special events fund for our cultural attractions
agencies to host blockbuster attractions
- Collaborate with cultural attractions and municipalities on strategically
targeted cultural tourism campaigns for foreign markets.
- Ensure the culture sector is represented on all trade and business
missions.
- Work to have the province's places internationally recognized
as world
heritage sites by UNESCO.
Nurture artists
- Provide artists with business training seminars in all Small
Business
Enterprise Centres across Ontario.
- Increase annual funding to the Ontario Arts Council by a further
$5
million per year starting in the 2008/2009 budget year in addition
to our
previously committed funding of $55 million by 2009/10.
More information to follow shortly...
Ontario Museum Association
oma@museumsontario.com
416-348-8672
or toll-free in Ontario 1-866-OMA-8672
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