The artist behind a cross-Canada tour to promote the country’s 150th birthday and encourage citizens to “tell their stories” calls a $155,000 federal grant for the project “a drop in the bucket.”

The Red Couch Tour was granted the cash under the Department of Canadian Heritage’s Canada 150 Fund. The tour will see the scarlet sofa travel the country in an effort to encourage Canadians to sit and tell their stories.

The $210 million Canada 150 fund has allocated $80 million for signature projects, $100 million for community-driven projects, $20 million for major events and $10 million for the Federal Secretariat for Canada 150.

The total amount of federal funding for Canada 150, however, will be more than $500 million. This includes the Canada 150 Community Infrastructure Program, which has pledged $300 million to “fix up public facilities and for community infrastructure, culture and recreation” and allow free access to Canada’s national parks for all of 2017.

“Canada spends tons of money on public opinion polls to try and figure out what we like and don’t like, and it’s $155,000 — which is a drop in the bucket, really. This is probably the most important public poll that we undertake in a sense,” said artist Ela Kinowska.

Kinowska and her partner, Peter Sobierajski, are Ottawa-based artists. The Polish-born immigrants say the couch tour will start in March with stops in Winnipeg and Churchill, Manitoba before heading north to Iqaluit, Yellowknife and Whitehorse.

In June and July, the sofa will board an RV for an eight-week trip from Newfoundland and Labrador to British Columbia, stopping along the way in churches, community centres and public spaces.

Cameras will record the famous and not-so-famous describing what Canada means to them. The public will be able to track the couch’s journey online.

Not everyone is wild about the concept. “You don’t want to be the party pooper,” said Aaron Wudrick, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. “It’s a celebration, these things cost money, and we get that.

“(But) the couch, that one was a bit of an eyebrow-raiser.

“The idea of sending a couch across the country, I don’t know that there’s any special significance. What is special about sitting on a couch that has to do with Canada’s 150th birthday? I think it could become a bit of a running joke. I don’t know a lot of people that would want to sit on a couch that thousands of people have already sat on.”

Kinowska said she believes the tour will allow Canadians of all stripes to have a valuable conversation about what unites them.

“Instead of going to peoples’ living rooms, we’re taking it to them. And the living room is the most important part of the Canadian home,” she said.