As soon as the report of a group of independent experts on the cultural sovereignty of Quebec in the digital age was published, the Minister of Culture and Communications, Mathieu Lacombe, announced his intention to legislate so that Quebec content can be found its rightful place on online platforms. It was time.
Quebec has long prided itself on its distinct language and culture in America, but, like many states on the continent, it blissfully contemplated the irrepressible advance of the American cultural industry on digital platforms freed from rules and regulations. constraints of the old analog world. We receive the result of our collective inaction on full display, every time we search in vain for a piece of ourselves on online streaming platforms. Try to introduce Quebec cinema – classic or contemporary – to your children on foreign streaming platforms. You will find them in dribs and drabs, on the distant outskirts of the digital galaxy. The same goes for music or television here. This is a major issue for the vitality of French-speaking culture and the development of creators.
Enter four experts mandated by Quebec to determine courses of action: Clément Duhaime and Louise Beaudoin, respectively former chief of staff and former minister for the Parti Québécois who made careers in the diplomatic circles of the international Francophonie, Véronique Guèvremont, professor at the Faculty of Law of Laval University and holder of the UNESCO Chair on the diversity of cultural expressions, and his colleague Patrick Taillon, specialist in the Constitution and democracy.
The fruit of their reflections is halfway between pedagogy on Quebec’s long march for autonomy in the field of culture and the demand for it to take a further step on this path. Although telecommunications are under federal jurisdiction, culture is a shared responsibility. Experts therefore believe that Quebec can legislate to regulate platforms such as Netflix, Disney or Spotify. The report advocates in some way updating the concept of quotas in the digital age, by requiring online listening platforms to do more to increase the discoverability of French-speaking content, from a national and international perspective. For those who see this as an impossible heresy in a market economy, experts cite in support the case of France, where platforms are forced to respect minimum requirements for the distribution of French and European content.
The originality of the report lies in its reaffirmation of the cultural sovereignty of Quebec in the global Francophonie market (with 321 million speakers) without waiting for a gift that will not come from the federal government. As proof, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals welcomed with indifference and casualness Quebec’s request to be consulted during the work surrounding the reform of the Broadcasting Act. This is only a postponement.
In an effort to rebuild the balance of power with Ottawa, experts are recommending a modification to the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms so that it guarantees “fundamental cultural rights” for the benefit of Quebecers, a formulation which will require a debate to dissipate the feeling of blur. More concretely, the working group also proposes that the government of Quebec adopt its own law, modeled on the reform of the Broadcasting Act, and interfere in the current work on the development of regulatory policy. in Ottawa. The objective is to persuade Ottawa to take into consideration Quebec’s cultural exception in the development of the new Canadian digital ecosystem. Experts discuss the case of immigration, a field where a federal-provincial agreement grants certain powers to Quebec.
Minister Lacombe seized the opportunity. In a well-orchestrated choreography, he proposed to legislate on the very day the report was published. “We are going to do everything we can, because we have the means to achieve our ambitions,” he said. Last year, the Trudeau government cavalierly ignored Minister Lacombe’s demands that the reform of the Broadcasting Act be accompanied by a “mandatory and official consultation mechanism from the Government of Quebec.”
This is a nice hot potato for the new Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pascale St-Onge, an ally of Quebec culture. While the Liberals are in the cable, it falls to him the delicate task of advancing this demand without special treatment for our national culture being perceived as a provocation or a whim of Quebec by the liberal forces in English Canada. The heavy liberal legacy in these matters gives reason to the Legault government to focus on a strategy of national affirmation, for the future of our world.