The first problem is the grant system has a giant weighted boner towards acts that it deems "Export Ready". This is why you see a band like Metric continue to receive funding while they are playing arenas in Canada. (i.e. "if we keep giving Metric money, maybe they'll eventually break internationally and be self-sufficient") The flip side is a guy like Jason Collett who has been handed a QUARTER MILLION DOLLARS in Factor grants and yet still continues to play venues about the same size that I do. A decade worth of funding later, is he still considered "export ready"? Shouldn't something have happened by now? etc, etc? No offence to Collett, who I genuinely like, but he's an easy target for critics of the system. The second major problem I have is the legendary amount of fraud that happens because of the Factor system. Factor will only provide a maximum of 50% funding for a project. The artist is on the hook for paying the other 50% out of pocket. This ends up propping up a whole side industry of managers, grant writers, PR douchebags, etc writing fake quotes and invoices for their friends to ensure that the actual total cost of a project doesn't cost the artist anything out of pocket. The artist, in turn, gets to pay their friends/associates with grant money. Everybody wins, right? Everybody except the defrauded taxpayers of Canada. The lack of transparency on the whole thing used to drive me nuts (until I stopped giving a shit about any of it). If Bumstead Management is so good at writing grant applications, why can't I see what they are doing right so I can learn how to do it too? As soon as somebody has penned a successful grant application, they can set up a sideline business writing grants for others and funnelling some that sweet sweet gov't grant $$$ into their own pockets.