At a time when 17 cultural organizations gathered in front of the Montreal office of the Minister of Culture, Mathieu Lacombe, to denounce what they describe as significant cuts in the funding of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ), the elected official CAQ maintained on Wednesday that the culture budget is not shrinking, it is increasing.
While opening the door to growing these investments even further, he refused to hold these discussions during general meetings on the future of the industry. “I am not sure that the Estates General is the right way,” he said in the morning after reading a letter signed by more than 300 artists requesting the organization of such a summit. to allow Quebec creators to better “understand the workings of grant allocation and budget management”.
In Montreal, a common front of cultural organizations held a press conference in front of its office to denounce the reduction in the CALQ’s budgets — a situation made all the more critical, according to them, in a context where the number of organizations that depend on it increase. The cultural sector is going through “unprecedented” difficulties in the current inflationary context, declared Camille Cazin, general director of the Regroupement des artistes en arts nationaux du Québec, a member of the common front.
According to the calculations of Dutyand taking into account inflation, the recurring amounts allocated to Support the CALQ’s mission have seen their total value decrease by 6% since 2017. In total, this year, 446 companies will be supported by this funding, 31 less that seven years ago.
Statements which are “false”, according to Minister Lacombe. “I don’t deny that there are challenges. On the other hand, I object to anyone saying that funding is declining,” he thundered, in the press scrum, recalling that a one-off sum of ten million dollars had been offered to 125 organizations disseminating shows this year.
Duty chose to exclude these funds due to the temporary nature of the measure, which only corrects for the next year the effects of a multi-annual program which, over four years, is declining.
Mathieu Lacombe assures that he sympathizes with the artists who are in the street to ask for “too little investment” from the CALQ. “I will not be the one who tells them that everything is fine,” he agreed on Wednesday, before ensuring that he would continue to study ways to increase the amounts allocated to culture.
“Let’s work on solutions to increase funding over the next few years because I think our industry really needs it,” he said.
Further details will follow.
With Olivier Du Ruisseau