Canadians open Breast Milk Bar on July 13

[gonzo]

OTTAWA -- The federal Conservative government says it won't lay a hand on the Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar.

A Toronto performance artist is offering the public an opportunity to sample human breast milk, in the spirit of wine tasting, and the lesbian single mother is using a $9,000 grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to help get the creative juices flowing.

That's the kind of avant garde stuff that used to make Conservative MPs paw the earth in opposition.

Tories and their Canadian Alliance and Reform party forebears have teed off over the past decade on government arts funding for everything from Bubbles Galore, a soft-porn art film, to Scatalogue: 30 Years of Crap in Contemporary Art, to a masturbating Mexican and the controversial "flesh dress'' -- a 23-kilogram flank steak number that once hung in the National Gallery.
"The whole concept is just totally obscene and one thin dime of public money going to something like this would be 10 cents too much,'' B.C. MP Jim Abbott fumed in 2001 over Mexican artist Israel Mora's ejaculate, on display in a cooler at the Banff Centre.

Today, Abbott is parliamentary secretary to Heritage Minister Bev Oda and a more reticent art critic.

Inquiries to his office Friday about the lactation station prompted a return call from Oda's spokesman, Robert Paterson, who said the Canada Council for the Arts operates at arm's length from the government.

"I can't offer an official view on this particular program,'' said Paterson. "It would be inappropriate for the minister to interfere directly.''
The Conservative government, added Paterson, continues to support funding for artists who have "a positive message for Canadians.''
Jason Kenney, parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, reacted with bemusement rather than anger to the breast milk sampler, which is scheduled for July 13 at the Ontario College of Art & Design Professional Gallery.

"Personally I think we should be funding cultural endeavours that actually draw an audience, that people are actually interested in,'' said Kenney. "I'm not sure that's the case here.''

The breast milk, provided by six different women according to artist Jess Dobkin, will be pasteurized for health and safety reasons. But that consideration didn't seem top of mind for federal Health Minister Tony Clement.

"A chacun son gout,'' -- to each his own tastes, said Clement, before quickly adding, "It's not for me.''

An aide interjected that the funding would have come from the arts council.
"Yes, thank goodness it didn't come from us, let's put it that way,'' agreed the minister.