Despite attracting a large crowd to kick off the 37th annual Caribana festival at Nathan Phillips Square yesterday, organizers weren't smiling.
By Katherine Harding"It isn't enough," John Kam, chair of the Caribbean Cultural Committee, said shortly after the federal government announced it would give the two-week festival $250,000 this year, $100,000 less than it requested. The City of Toronto has contributed $366,000 and the province $400,000.
Caribana, which began as a one-day event in 1967, has attracted close to one million people each summer to Toronto for years. About half of the visitors are from the United States and the Caribbean. Although it has become one of the city's most popular events and is North America's largest Caribbean festival, it has struggled financially.
Its well documented financial problems go back to the early 1990s, when its debt hovered around $555,000.
By 1998, city councillor Joe Mihevc, the council's liaison with Caribana, was working with organizers to secure a three-year funding deal with the three levels of government. In exchange, Caribana organizers had to clean up the event's books. They have struggled since then to keep the popular festival going.
Mr. Kam said organizers have already scaled back some of the festival's expenses this year, including a plan to rent Dundas Square for five days. "Now we are just going to use it for one," he said.
The festival, which is held mainly downtown and offers everything from colourful costumes to calypso music, costs about $2-million to hold.
Organizers were hoping to attract large corporate sponsors to help pick up costs, such as insurance, extra policing and portable toilets, but haven't been able to sign even one, Mr. Kam said. Previous corporate sponsors have included Royal Bank of Canada.
"Since SARS last year, they have been very slow to come on board," he said.
Mr. Mihevc said he's disappointed that the federal government didn't give more money to the festival and that it should at least have matched the city's and province's contributions.
"Caribana historically has always been seen as a one-off event for governments." He said the city has recently stopped funding it that way and now ranks it with other organizations, such as the National Ballet of Canada, that count on annual city grants.
"The province and the federal government should be stronger funding partners. . . . Caribana will always need government support," Mr. Mihevc said.
For example, Caribana organizers had no idea how much the federal government was giving this year until yesterday, when Jean Augustine, Canada's minister of state for multiculturalism, made the announcement.
She couldn't be reached for comment.
