Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I am pleased to be sitting on this committee as the Bloc Québécois' new heritage critic. I thank my colleagues, including Mr. Coderre, for their cooperation and for allowing this important meeting to take place. I especially want to acknowledge Mr. Harris, with whom I sat on the Standing Committee on Natural Resources.
I am going to draw a parallel between the situation we are experiencing here and the one we experienced at the Committee on Natural Resources. The method is the same. We cannot accuse the Conservatives of changing their tune. Quite the opposite; when they came to power, they abolished a number of programs that they said were performing badly or were poorly conceived. They cancelled energy efficiency programs simply to re-establish them a few months later under different names and with different criteria.
Now here they are, in the middle of the summer, with the Olympic Games going on, sneaking up behind artists and the cultural industry in Quebec and Canada to attack them. It is being done arbitrarily and crassly, unacceptably in our view. So today's working session is important, as is the need to prepare a witness list so that we can conduct a thorough study on the incomprehensible decision that the government has just made.
When I hear Mr. Del Mastro talk, I get the impression that he has not followed what has gone on in Quebec in the last two weeks. It is as if he had no knowledge of the hundreds of letters that I, as heritage critic, have received and that he too has likely received as a permanent member of this committee. I do not know if those here this afternoon are permanent members of the committee. We have received letters from all the great cultural associations in Quebec and in Canada, from artists, from musicians, from poets, from choreographers and from dancers. Every significant player in the cultural community has expressed anger and opposition.
And make no mistake, we are in touch with the interests of Quebeckers. We in the Bloc Québécois want to be their representatives and stand up for them. The Conservative government seems to be out of touch with today's cultural values and interests. I am quite comfortable with the list of witnesses that Mr. Coderre proposes. I really hope that Minister Josée Verner will come to testify and provide us with explanations. We still cannot understand her reasons at all, in fact. We would really like to understand the criteria that the government used when it decided to abruptly cut these programs for the cultural community. A number of positive comments were there to be read on the website. There were no recommendations to abolish any of the programs.
And why are the so-called strategic evaluations confidential? You do not cut programs with no explanation other than they do not work. These particular cases are putting the cultural community in a situation that threatens the organization of cultural events in Quebec, in Canada and overseas. Of course you know that a dance company tour does not get organized the day before they leave; it is part of a program. These programs are worked out one or two years in advance. What is happening now is affecting the community's stability and organization, and that is unacceptable. This is a community that showcases Quebec and Canada at home and abroad.
We want to understand the reasons for the cuts, especially the PromArt and Trade Routes programs. I have made myself familiar with the list of organizations and artists affected by these measures. I do not know how giving $1,500 to a poet can be considered a waste of money if it allows Quebec poetry to become better known in Europe or elsewhere in the world. These are small amounts, and for people who are only interested in figures, perhaps they seem insignificant and ineffective. But the total amount of money involved means that all artists will be penalized when it comes to promoting and expressing their art.
So, like my colleague Mr. Malo, I ask that this study be taken seriously because the community demands it. It is mobilizing as we speak and demanding answers from the government. As the opposition party that represents and stands up for the interests of Quebec, and specifically in this case the interests of artists and the cultural industry, we are going to demand that a number of witnesses appear, particularly Ms. Verner's deputy minister, Minister Verner, Mr. Emerson, all the officials who played a key role in the evaluations and, of course, the major players from many cultural organizations. I am thinking of the Association nationale des éditeurs de livres and of the Mouvement pour les arts et les lettres, to mention only two of Quebec's major organizations.
I have also noticed that several universities in Quebec are going to be affected by the cuts announced by the Conservatives. Behind the artistic expression of a cultural product, there is a whole research network. This allows Quebec and Canada to be in the forefront of knowledge on multimedia and other media, which allows the cultural community to flourish even more. Those universities will also surely be interested in coming to testify before our committee.
Those who know me—and I am specifically thinking of Mr. Harris—know that, as a member of Parliament, my first interest is the study, not playing party politics. My interest is in getting results and understanding a situation. This case really is about defending the interests of artists. Mr. Chair, I hope that our work will proceed calmly and collegially so that it is productive. It is my hope that it will result in the government being convinced to reverse its position and re-establish the programs that it has so cavalierly scrapped.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.