Lynn Coady, author of Saints of Big Harbour, Play the Monster Blind and Strange Heaven, is a Vancouver fiction writer and essayist. She will be writing in this space every other Tuesday.

Have you ever wondered why people tell you it's crass to discuss money? To shut poor people up, is why. The idea that personal finances are not a fit topic for polite company is a luxury affordable only to the middle class and those further up that gilded ladder we're always hearing about. It's an attitude that's infuriating not only in the Barbara Amiels of the world but somehow even more so when witnessed among the very people who should be talking loudest and longest about precisely how broke they are. Every single mother who retreats in shame after being refused a bank account, every homeless person who nods dumbly at the idiot shouting at them to get cleaned up and get a job (like it's never occurred to them) makes me grit my teeth. You wanna punch someone at such times, but who? Where's Barbara Amiel when you really need her?

Above, admittedly, are extreme examples of the speechless poor, and Canada's arts community, the group I'll be discussing today, is thankfully not always in such straits. Those in the arts can, however, be just as impotent when it comes to speaking up for themselves and their status in society. (Although the person who gave me the idea for this column, I should note, is an artist and single mother who possesses a credit card for one reason only -- her willingness to throw a very loud fit in the middle of a bank. Nice job, kid. We need people like you.)

Like my credit-wielding friend, Nova Scotia playwright Wendy Lill is another such noisy artist, and we in the arts community are lucky indeed to have her, because she's also the MP for Dartmouth, N.S. It's clear that as a playwright, Lill has had occasion to survey the state of actors, writers and other such denizens of the culture industry. Apparently, she has found it wanting, writing: "All the current evidence shows that artists provide the largest subsidy to Canadian art in the form of persistent lost or low income."

This is important to note for all you art lovers out there. That night at the theatre and/or symphony you love so much? The galleries you visit? Those novels you just eat up? All that money you pay to enjoy those things? Its smallest possible percentage is allocated to feed and clothe the very creators of this cultural largesse. Imagine the dissonance your average starving poet feels surrounded by moneyed book-lovers and big-wig sponsors at your local writer's festival. Or the supreme weirdness of the novelist nominated for a glitzy award like the Giller Prize, with its debauched evening of champagne, tuxes and gowns. I have heard the experience likened to being a street-level prostitute, yanked into a limo by a group of corporate man-gods, and treated to the good life for one queenly booze-and-bonbon-addled night. Before, of course, a bouquet is shoved into your arms as you are simultaneously shoved back into the street to face cold, familiar reality.

Lill has proposed a minor corrective to this situation, as hyperbolically represented above, in the form of private member's motion M-293. To wit:

"That, in the opinion of this House, the government should celebrate and encourage Canada's magnificent and diverse culture by changing the Income Tax Act to exempt creative and interpretive artists from paying income tax on a percentage of income derived from copyright, neighbouring rights, and/or other income derived from the sale of any creative work."

For those hardworking and upstanding Canadians who roll their eyes at this idea, I would reiterate that the income artists gain from "copyright, neighbouring rights, and/or the sale of any creative work," is generally minuscule. Most artists excepting a select few in Canada (think Oryx and Crake) don't come close to making their living off such income, but must be subsidized by the Canada Council and other arts-funding bodies, if not a second job. And Canada Council income, like all government artistic grants, is taxable. So calm yourself, Mr. Canadian Taxpayer. Artists would still have to pony up with everybody else in April. In addition, Lill herself points out, "Our tax system is currently a maze of special benefits designed to reward Canadians such as those who invest in their retirement RRSP, or in Canadian businesses. But there is nothing in our current tax system to encourage Canadians to invest with their creative soul through art."

Preach it, sister. My only reservation with regard to Lill's endeavours on artists' behalf is about her use of expressions like "invest with their creative soul through art." Arty types are always forgetting that your average working stiffs don't respond well to this kind of language. Their backs go up.

That's the kind of life those artsy bastards chose, the argument goes, and if they don't like it, why don't they get a real job? 'I'd love to be sitting around investing creative soul in stuff,' they'll tell you (non-artists always describe artists as 'sitting around'). They'd love to sit around all day painting dirty pictures and writing dirty stories and putting on dirty plays and what have you. But no, they have to go to a crummy office everyday and sit in a crummy cubicle drinking crummy coffee and listen to old man Jenkins, busting their hump about one thing or another for seven hours a day, five days a week.

If anyone deserves a tax break (because a steady income, health benefits, UI and vacation pay is not enough), it's them!

True enough. Still, if they don't like it, one wonders, why don't they get a real job?

Lill's motion will be put to a vote in June. Now would be the time to start harassing your MP.