Dear Honorable Mayor Rawlings-Blake, As a friend and admirer of Baltimore's legendary Senator Theatre, it's encouraging to learn that you and your mayoral administration represent a new generation of municipal leadership, ushering in an era of transparency, trust and integrity. The future of the renowned Senator Theatre will be determined on your watch, and your legacy as Mayor will be intertwined with the rich history of "Baltimore's Premiere Showplace," as the redevelopment process for the landmark theatre comes to fruition. In this historic instance, you have a fortuitous opportunity, as Mayor, to lead the city's evolution above and beyond a nagging perception that casts Baltimore in a negative light, as hostile to a progressive view of historic preservation as the foundation of enlightened economic development policy. A controversy is brewing, though, over The Senator Theatre RFP process, being conducted by The Baltimore Development Corporation(BDC) under a shroud of secrecy and back room intrigue.

The 2008 federal budget contained an allowance of $680,000,000 over 2 years to prepare for the Vancouver Olympics. We wonder if the government would be committed to spending an equivalent amount on Canadian artists. According to the Canadian Conference of the Arts, "the 2010 Budget includes stable funding to arts and culture with no cuts, but also yields no new investments into the creative economy."

The arts have been one of the principle ways by which Canadians have defined our identity. Since the 1980s, however, arts in Canada have been at the 'cutting edge' of cuts to federal government spending. Making such sacrifices, with one of the most important indicators of who we are as a nation, is a risky endeavour.