By the end of the election campaign, the editorial team of the To have to will offer an analysis of the main commitments of political parties on themes that concern all Quebecers. Today: culture.
The backbone of what forms the soul of a people, culture has been given the label of national pride more often than not under the impetus of a Coalition avenir Québec which likes to call itself fundamentally blue. . If all the parties claim to share a similar attachment to our culture, none has made it a structuring axis of its campaign. Generally absent from electoral speeches except to spice them up with timely anecdotes, it finds itself relegated to the bottom of the programs, scattered in a rain of disembodied measures.
It is conceded, with the exception of the platform of the Conservative Party of Quebec, where the word culture is conspicuous by its absence, interesting proposals to give oxygen to the middle are abounding. We salute the desire to train new audiences, both at the CAQ and at Québec solidaire and at the Parti québécois, which says it wants to “develop a culture of culture”, a nice formula that we would like to see adopted by all. We applaud this same trio when it says it wants to put forward measures aimed at young people, the keystone of this essential renewal. With a special mention to the annual $100 cultural passport that the PQ want to offer to students and newcomers.
Similarly, we approve of the CAQ’s reaffirmed desire to make reading a national priority, like that of QS to regulate the price of new books. The fact remains that on the left as on the right, we insist above all – and with good reason – on the need to restore the trunk and the breath to an environment which has had its wings cut off by the pandemic. Unfortunately, we cannot resume the conversation where everything stopped, in March 2020. If the fracture was already worrying before the pandemic, it has since become abysmal.
To audiences that are becoming scarce and a culture that travels less and with more difficulty have been added the reflexes of “voluntary confined”. Helping telework, we go out little and we are satisfied with a more frugal menu than ever, often free or by diverted subscription (thank you YouTube, Netflix and others). Tenacious folds that inflation works inexorably to dig out and that the parties struggle to iron out one by one with measures disconnected from each other.
Problems of visibility and demand, however, should be met with a common electroshock. The Liberal Party has a superb idea in its cards with its Estates General on the Performing Arts. But it should be expanded: our screens are also in crisis, our heritage is going down the drain. Admittedly, the book is doing well, we have read blue as never in recent months, but the literary milieu remains fragile, with the status of the artist to be rebuilt almost from scratch. Let’s stop thinking about culture in silos: all this beautiful world is interconnected, linked by a French fact that we are also surprised not to see supported more.
In this respect, it is difficult to follow the vision of the Liberal Party, which seems narrow on paper, dependent as it is on this strange conception which makes it put on the same footing “belonging to Canada” and “the identification in Quebec”. And if Dominique Anglade’s party says it paradoxically wants to continue “the efforts undertaken by Robert Bourassa in terms of cultural sovereignty and to repatriate full powers in matters of culture” – we could not be more in agreement with this principle – we cannot find not a line on the influence of our culture, here or elsewhere.
However, it is clear that our culture is shrinking in our lives and on the international scene. And it’s not just a matter of demographic weight or language. In terms of soft powers, the vitality of Israeli production and the Korean miracle are enough to shatter many received ideas on the subject. There are miracles to be done in terms of discoverability and cultural sovereignty. No need to wait obediently for Ottawa to show its teeth. In this regard, the PQ has an ace in its hand, with the creation of a promotion office with global platforms.
Still, we all know that it will be up to the CAQ, ultimately, to hold the wand. However, its cultural vision suffers from the same evil as its indolent slogan, “Let’s continue”. The Legault government, however, gave a great boost to culture during its first term. By financing it very significantly, first, but also by giving birth to an ambitious project, that of the Blue Spaces whose fruits are still awaited, in addition to a revision of the status of the artist torn off at the eleventh hour.
It is on this energy that we will have to rely. And on a healthy emulation between the parties. Transpartisan, the ideal cultural project will above all have to accelerate. This cultural policy comes to us from the Liberals. She did more than her time. At the rate at which the connected world is going, culture deserves much more frequent dusting.