moved:
That, in the opinion of the House, the government should give direct assistance to artists by increasing the annual budget of the Canada Council for the Arts to $300 million and should roll back the cuts it announced in the cultural sector and restore funding for the following programs to their fiscal 2008-2009 levels: Arts Promotion Program, Trade Routes, National Training Program for the Film and Video Sector, New Media Research Networks Fund, Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund, Canada Feature Film Fund and Canadian Music Memories Program.
Madam Speaker, I want to start by saying that I have a hard time believing that, after artists and people across the country demonstrated, especially during the most recent election campaign, how important they considered the cultural programs the government had cut last summer without consultation, I should have to initiate a debate in this House today to get the government to understand the importance of funding for those programs. Motion M-297, which we are debating today, is very simply stated, but very important.
That, in the opinion of the House, the government should give direct assistance to artists by increasing the annual budget of the Canada Council for the Arts to $300 million and should roll back the cuts it announced in the cultural sector and restore funding for the following programs to their fiscal 2008-2009 levels: Arts Promotion Program, Trade Routes, National Training Program for the Film and Video Sector, New Media Research Networks Fund, Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund, Canada Feature Film Fund and Canadian Music Memories Program.
I have introduced this motion because this debate must be held even though the Conservatives would rather avoid it at all costs. These cuts were announced on the department's website in the middle of summer, when everyone was more interested in barbecues than in politics. Why in the middle of summer? Was the study on the relevance of these programs completed in the middle of July? I highly doubt it. Why did they decide to make the announcement at a time when everyone was on vacation at the cottage, busy with other things, and not paying much attention to the news? They did it because they wanted to bury it and move on to the next issue as quickly as possible.
I was outraged, so I got together with some other members and called an emergency meeting of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. I acted on my commitment to make sure that our artists, as the voice of our nation, get as many opportunities as possible to show and perform their work. The committee meeting took place on Tuesday, August 26, 2008, and the members of the governing party did everything in their power to prevent the committee from addressing the issue immediately because they knew that an election campaign was imminent.
In Canada, culture is an $84.6 billion industry that provides over a million jobs. In Quebec, the cultural sector accounts for 314,000 jobs, 171,000 of them direct. In Montreal alone, culture generates $1.4 billion in revenues. Does the government realize that it collects some $8 billion in taxes from cultural activities?
The Conservatives have never bothered to take those facts into account. They defend their cuts, saying that programs were evaluated and found to be inefficient or ineffective. But nobody has seen any documents pertaining to these so-called evaluations.
Why have neither the current Minister of Canadian Heritage nor his predecessor, the minister responsible for the Quebec City region, submitted the results of these evaluations? Are these evaluations just a sham or an alibi for the Prime Minister's Office?
We have been told that these so-called strategic evaluations are confidential. Why are they confidential? Anyone with half a brain can see that the government is trying to cover up studies that support programs it would rather cut in an attempt to silence people whose messages differ from its own. One begins to feel a bit cynical about this government, which was elected in 2006 on a transparency platform.
The government is using the excuse that the programs are not working. Why refuse to provide explanations then, especially in the case at hand, where the cultural community was left in a situation that is destabilizing the organizing of cultural events in Quebec, in Canada and abroad?
Hon. members probably know that a tour, be it for a dance troupe or any other group of artists, is not something that can be organized overnight and is part of a program of activities. Programs are generally negotiated one year or sometimes two ahead of time. In addition, it is easy to understand that, given its size, our population alone cannot support all that is produced. Capital raised by international tours is required for that. That is another reason why the assistance to programs like Trade Routes and PromArt are important in ensuring artistic innovation.
I expressed my outrage at the announcement cooked up in secret by the government. In fact, the entire artistic community was outraged at the same time. Let us simply think of the rally organized by the cultural community on August 27, 2008, in Montreal. This was a grassroots rally from which a coalition was born spontaneously.
This coalition has spread to Ontario, Atlantic Canada and western Canada. Essentially, people from Quebec and across Canada have expressed their concerns to the government, a government that would not listen. It is up to us, as representatives of the people, to take up our responsibilities, speak on their behalf in this chamber where democracy is upheld and pass Motion M-297.
These programs represented an investment of $23 million a year. This is truly an investment, because the economic benefits and cultural spinoffs from these programs far exceeded $23 million a year. I would like to give just a few examples to show that this was direct assistance given to artists, which allowed them to create and to showcase themselves in a way that would otherwise have been difficult to do.
Amy Belling from British Columbia received $1,300 to show her short film at a festival in Rotterdam. This is far from the billions of dollars in subsidies to the oil industry, is it not?
Also, $15,000 was allocated to attract foreign buyers to the 25th edition of the International Festival of Films on Art in Montreal. The Conservatives are saying that that money was probably poorly managed or invested. However, with that $15,000, art film directors had the opportunity to screen their films and sell their documentaries, which would then be seen around the world. There is also the Académie baroque de Montréal, an instrumental ensemble, which received $10,000 for six concerts in Germany and a concert of Mozart's music in Milan. It was a small price to pay for the prestige it brought to us all, and for the unique experience enjoyed by our musicians.
Instead of cuts, the Quebec artistic community was expecting an increase in the Canada Council for the Arts budget to $300 million. For the past five years, the Bloc Québécois, together with the Mouvement pour les arts et les lettres du Québec, has been asking the federal government to increase the Canada Council's annual budget significantly to $300 million, which would help improve funding for artists. With such a significant budget increase, the Canada Council could raise the number and the value of grants to individual artists, as well as subsidies to arts organizations.
It must be understood that such a measure will have a direct impact on artists' working conditions and revenues, even though artists already live below the poverty line, which is quite tragic.
Not only would the number of cultural productions have increased, but such an initiative would have helped bolster the revenues of artists, crafts people and cultural workers.
As an aside, I would like to talk briefly about our artists' revenues. For some time, the Bloc Québécois has been asking the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to look closely at and conduct a real study of our artists' living conditions. It is very worrisome, knowing that many of our artists are living below the poverty line.
Let us get back to raising the Canada Council for the Arts budget to $300 million. Why did the Liberals wait until just a few days before the election was called in 2005 to announce increasing the budget to $300 million? Was it simply to embellish their election campaign? That is a completely legitimate question. As for the Conservatives, they have limited that increase to $30 million a year.
And yet, this government calls itself a strong supporter of culture, which is really a contradiction. One need only take a look at the Canadian Heritage website. On the Internet page of each program that was cut we can read the following: “Promoting Canadian culture to the world is important because it has a direct impact on foreign policy, tourism, immigration, business and investment.”
On the same page, in a small red box, we see: “IMPORTANT NOTICE / PLEASE NOTE Please note that the Cultural Sector Grant program mentioned below will be concluded as of March 31, 2009.” How ironic.
The government boasts about the impact of actively promoting culture and in the next breath announces that the programs will conclude on March 31, 2009.