“Historic” day for the cultural community: after years of waiting, the reform of the status of the artist was finally adopted Friday in the National Assembly, which many believed impossible a few weeks ago.
Tabled in April by the Minister of Culture, Nathalie Roy, Bill 35 was destined to die on the order paper, while the last parliamentary session before the elections ends in mid-June. But the Legault government and the oppositions had exceptionally agreed to study the bill on the Committee on the Economy and Labor, rather than on the Committee on Culture and Education, which considerably accelerated the process. legislative.
The reform of the status of the artist was ultimately adopted unanimously on Friday at the Blue Salon, to the delight of artists’ associations and unions. The new law provides additional protections for artists, including expanding access to the Administrative Labor Tribunal and incorporating new provisions to combat harassment of any kind in the workplace.
This broad overhaul of the status of the artist also extends to writers and visual artists, who were until then under the yoke of a law with much less bite on working conditions than artists in the performing arts. and audiovisual. Concretely, writers and visual artists will now be able to sign collective agreements, rather than negotiating piecemeal with their publisher or producer to establish their conditions.
The publishers had expressed fears about the establishment of this new balance of power in the literary industry a few weeks ago, but the deputies still saw fit to legislate in this direction.
It should be noted, however, that the new law does not affect, as the Liberal Party and Québec solidaire would have liked, independent journalists, freelancers who nevertheless face realities similar to those of artists.
However, the reform of the status of the artist has been amended to tighten the screws on producers who are not members of an association and who use tax schemes to avoid giving artists their due.
It is also specified in the legislative text which has just been voted that the government will have to table a report in five years in order to weigh the consequences of the new law.