Over at the BlogsCanada e-group, Russil dont-judge-me-by-my-Geocities-URL Wyong has posted an excellent analysis of how our government collects and spends our tax dollars. In particular, there’s a great table which shows how the government spends the roughly CAN $15,000 they collect for every Canadian.
Roughly speaking, out of $15,000 in total spending per capita, there’s $5000 for social services, $5000 for health and education, and $5000 for everything else, including $1500 for interest on the debt and $1200 for protection of persons and property (meaning military, police, legal system, firefighting).
$370 on recreation and culture and $320 on the environment ain’t much. I wonder how that $370 breaks down–I tried to find out, but Statistics Canada wants me to pay them $3 for the privilege.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
Martin is no dummy and he and his flunkies took considerable care to avoid using “arts and culture” terminology in the 2004 budget, according to the CBC. From my own review of the budget, I’d guess that he’s hidden it under “Communities”, “Knowledge” and “Learning”.
The 2001 budget is out of date, but the CBC has some stats on the arts & culture breakdown.