Don’t throw any more! The yard is full! Between the new cultural infrastructure projects whose bills are exploding and the care to be given to aging buildings, the Quebec government no longer knows where to turn.
Cruel choices will have to be made. The cultural milieu must prepare for this.
The dossier we are publishing today shines the spotlight on a situation that will have enormous repercussions on the viability and development of our cultural network. Since the devil is in the details, let’s unravel it all!
The Government of Quebec is not a bottomless pocket. He will not be able to extend tens of millions indefinitely for each major project that runs into cost overruns as he has just agreed to do for the Museum of Contemporary Art, a state-owned company.
To better understand the mechanics, you should know that there are marked differences in the nature of the projects submitted to the Ministry of Culture and Communications (MCC), as rightly pointed out by André Courchesne, director of the Chair in arts Carmelle and Rémi-Marcoux from HEC Montreal.
Those affecting Crown corporations (Place des Arts, Grand Théâtre, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, etc.) receive greater attention from the Department. Normal, the Ministry is responsible for it.
The thing is different for cultural institutions that are NPOs. The members of their management and their board of directors will have to demonstrate increased vigilance if they launch a project. In the case of a cost overrun, it will be more difficult for them to knock on the Department’s door again. The pressure will be enormous.
If I were chairman of the board of a theater that is carrying out a renovation project, I would be shaking my buttocks. These institutions will have to find ways to solve their problems of inflated costs. Philanthropy plays an increasingly important role in Quebec, but it has its limits.
The government will have to make cruel choices, I say! No matter how much you add to the slices of the pie, the pie stays pretty much the same. We are in Quebec.
An eloquent example of this reality is the formidable Cube project, which would have brought together an international research center, the Maison Théâtre and the theater companies Le Carrousel and Le Clou around an artistic center devoted to children and young people. .
The total costs were around 80 million. Documents were filed in Quebec last November. After months of silence, those responsible for the project came to the conclusion that they had to move on.
And then there is the project of the McCord Museum, which was told by the Ministry to return to its drawing board and its calculator.
There are new construction or expansion projects, but there is also the maintenance of cultural sites. Many buildings with a cultural vocation are reaching a critical stage in their life, as the majority were built at the turn of the 1970s.
Some need love. Lots of love.
These maintenance costs are linked to the regionalization of our culture, which is undoubtedly the greatest success of recent decades. Today, most medium-sized cities have a place dedicated to culture, whether for the performing arts or the visual arts.
It’s amazing ! It’s extraordinary ! But this has a price. The requests come from everywhere and multiply.
The danger that awaits us is that large-scale projects whose costs continue to grow will overwhelm the others. Or put them in a waiting room forever.
I am not saying that the government must respond to all requests and all emergencies. We would be the first to denounce a casual management of public funds.
But one question arises: do we have the means to carry out so many new projects while ensuring the survival of existing infrastructures?
The cultural sector will have to elbow with those of health and education to get its demands through. Between these two poles, culture hardly weighs.
You are surely wondering what Ottawa and the municipalities can do on their side. The federal government has envelopes (often conditional on the decision of Quebec) which are mainly used for the purchase or renewal of equipment. As for the towns, they can transfer land or buildings which often then have to be renovated.
For cultural institutions, the Government of Quebec remains the main target to reach! Or to seduce.
The government, the Department of Culture and Communications in particular, finds itself in an unenviable situation where, no matter what it does, it will lose.
If he prefers one project to another, he will be criticized in the public square. If he puts projects on ice for too long, he will be criticized for neglecting culture.
A profound reflection on the responsibility of our cultural institutions must take place. The solution may lie in a fund dedicated to the repair and construction of cultural places as we do for heritage. This would be a form of insurance for those who manage theaters and venues in Quebec.
In such a context, we must stop for a moment on the Blue Spaces megaproject, which could not have happened worse. Can we afford the luxury of going further with this concept whose first four parts have greedily swallowed tens of millions? It is difficult to know the intentions of the government, because this project has become a sort of Voldemort in Quebec.
The history of our culture is built on choices, sacrifices, struggles and a lot of hard work. You know what ? More than ever it continues like this.