Canada’s duMaurier Arts Council doles out $2 million a year in grants to arts groups which otherwise might go unfunded. But the council, which is funded entirely by the Imperial Tobacco company, is about to be shut down, thanks to new restrictions on tobacco advertising by the federal government. “In what is widely being viewed in the arts community as one last, concerted effort by Imperial to shame the federal government into backing down on the advertising ban, the company issued a news release yesterday. It ran more than four pages and detailed, community by community, the $60 million the tobacco company has pumped into the arts through the council since 1971.”