Quebec is rich in natural resources, but do they belong to us? ask for the documentary For us at homewhich paints a disturbing picture of the state of play.
Posted yesterday at 11:00 a.m.
The pandemic has shed light on our dependence on supply systems that stretch to every corner of the world. The halt or slowdown in production in China, for example, has affected trade around the world and caused shortages of sometimes essential goods.
“We wondered how we got there”, sums up Dominic Leclerc, director of For us at homedocumentary presented Wednesday at Télé-Québec which wonders if Quebec has at its disposal the necessary levers to move towards autonomy.
His film is, to some extent, a lesson in financial economics, in that it explains how the international economy has become increasingly subject to a strictly short-term return-based logic that deals nature and natural resources (water, forests, mineral deposits, etc.) as goods or financial assets like all the others.
Dominic Leclerc stresses that it was in the wake of the 2008 crisis that major investors turned to “concrete”: natural resources and agricultural land, in particular. “From a strictly financial point of view, it holds up,” he agrees. From a political and community point of view, it raises questions and poses risks, underlines his film.
PHOTO FROM THE FILM FOR US AT HOME BY DOMINIC LECLERC
In For us at home, sociologist François L’Italien, from the Institute for Research in Contemporary Economics, dissects the laws of the market and meets farmers, fishermen and other workers for whom the abstract principles of financial capitalism have very concrete. It also gives the floor to the philosopher Alain Deneault, critic of the system, and to well-known personalities (the chef Colombe St-Pierre, for example) or less well-known people who have their community and the common good at heart.
“What is worrying is to see mines and forests in particular monopolized by large multinationals whose shareholders are located all over the planet, companies that are difficult to legislate and who have great power of persuasion, believes the director. . »
We can see this very clearly in Abitibi with the mining industry: we are ready to make a lot of sacrifices for jobs.
Dominic Leclerc, director
Possession and dispossession
What is highlighted in the film is the divide between the communities where the resources are found and those who exploit and profit from them. Is it a militant documentary? Dominic Leclerc says he didn’t want to write a pamphlet. “I think the strength of the film lies in the accumulation,” he explains. We have already seen films that talk about the forest or agriculture. The fact of having put all the resources together, with the angle of financialization and therefore of dispossession, that creates quite an effect. We really have the feeling that the carpet is slipping under our feet. »
“Having said that, I think I put some light in the film. At the same time as the observation which is hard, I wanted to film Quebec with a lot of love and that we travel with poetry, or almost, through the territory, he says. We criticize something, but the idea was also to become aware of the richness of our territory. It is almost absurd to be so dependent when we have so many possibilities. »
For us at home also has a digital component consisting of seven capsules of about four minutes each intended to popularize the concepts covered in the documentary and which will be online the day of the film’s broadcast. Educational content will also be available on the Télé-Québec site in class
On Télé-Québec, Wednesday, 8 p.m.