Artists and their associations are right to protest against the lack of funding from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ). The money is there. It’s just not being spent in the right place. It is absurd to know that major cultural institutions in Quebec have seen their subsidies frozen for another four years and to learn that 41 companies have seen their funding completely cut.
Why do the Ministry of Culture, and all the other ministries involved (there are at least a dozen of them) continue to pay millions to entertainment multinationals rather than properly supporting Quebec arts and culture? What are these ministers afraid of? To receive a call from Evenko or Groupe CH? Or a possible press campaign from the Grouping of Major International Events, this organization which defends tooth and nail its masters, the entertainment multinationals, who own the major festivals and other major sporting events?
The money paid by our various ministries goes directly into the profits of these companies. It even goes partly to the United States, in the case of Evenko. Since 2019, the CH Group has been associated in a joint venture with the American giant Live Nation Entertainment, the largest concert promoter in the world, to which it sold the activities of the independent Montreal promoter, producer and broadcaster Evenko, as well as those from Team Spectra.
Will these giants threaten to cut free shows? So what? Is it the mandate of the state to pay for free entertainment to its citizens when the need is so great elsewhere? And then, I would be curious to see if they would really make good on their threat. Evenko bought the Metro Metro and Fuego Fuego festivals. He bought his competitors and closed one. He did the same in England, buying 14 festivals and closing almost half of them. Listed on the New York Stock Exchange, will Live Nation do the same with Páramo in Colombia? Will he put an end to the free festival offered by the organization — which organizes around twenty events, mainly in Bogotá, without government subsidy — to increase its profits?
Mind you, this is absolutely his right. A private company can do whatever it wants with its money. It must make profits to satisfy its shareholders. This does not mean that our governments must help increase said profits at the expense of non-profit organizations that participate in the protection and dissemination of Quebec culture.
Because we must not deceive ourselves. Departmental budgets come directly from taxpayers’ pockets. This money does not grow on trees. Money from the Ministry of Culture or Tourism comes from the same place. If we consider all the sums from all these ministries which go to multi-billion dollar companies, and if these sums were more equitably redistributed, the CALQ would have a lot more means to accomplish its mission. I think I guess the ministers concerned are afraid. This is why they perpetuate this nonsense.