Mr. Speaker, in speaking today I would first of all like to reiterate my thanks to the constituents of my riding of Saint-Lambert who re-elected me. I will do my very best on their behalf.
Many of my constituents are concerned about the future of culture in Quebec and in Canada under a Conservative government. Some of them even believe that the term “culture” is not part of the Conservative vocabulary owing to the absence of any significant vision for culture in the throne speech. I would like to believe that this is a misunderstanding.
At this time I must point out the importance of culture. What is culture? It is that which enables humankind to create a framework for itself and for its development. It helps us to think for ourselves. It enables us to understand the world and to contribute to changing it for the better.
In Quebec, many of us believe that culture is key to having a sense of belonging to a community. It represents the essential fibre of a people, influencing its thoughts, words, actions and daily life and enabling the development of individual members of the community. For Quebec culture, this reality is intertwined with the exceptional need to affirm itself and to encourage the expression of its originality in North America.
Pursuing this affirmation, modernity and international influence is, for the only francophone state in the Americas, both a major cultural challenge and a top collective choice. Cultural Quebec is ready for sovereignty. As an exceptionally creative society, in a context of globalization and the burst of new technologies, it is important from now on for us to consider the challenges of communications and telecommunications, of creating and experiencing the arts, of accessing public institutions, cultural industries and heritage.
One of the main duties of the Bloc Québécois is to defend this reality to the Conservative government, which threatens to destroy any chance of a normal existence. In light of the Speech from the Throne, we anticipate the upcoming Conservative budget to be completely out of touch.
Rabelais said, “Science without a conscience will lead to the destruction of the soul”. Is the end of culture in Quebec and Canada nigh? With the Conservative government, that is the question.
Is the Conservative government against culture? Is the Conservative government against the arts? Is the Conservative government against artists and artisans? Is the Conservative government against renewal?
Silence on the issue of culture—I repeat—leads us to anticipate a slow death of culture by destruction of the arts, artists, the next generation in Quebec, of Quebec's identity, by the liquidation of our cultural sovereignty. This destruction will strike a major blow to Quebec's humanist and progressive culture, which has resisted standardization and cultural uniformity and which, during the Quiet Revolution, became formal policy, in the public service in particular. Public service and progressive culture are inextricably linked.
Would the silence concerning culture in the Speech from the Throne be hiding rather the temptation of a massive intrusion by the private sector, with its alienating financial power, into arts and culture?
Are we going to witness the dismantling of the museums? Are we going to witness the end of the transmission of knowledge in schools? Are we headed towards U.S.-style homogenization? Will we eventually undergo the unilateral, impoverishing ideological marking of content in the publishing media? Are we going to witness the accelerated deterioration of our public television and radio services, followed fatally by privatizations and moronic ratings races to sell available brain time to consumerism?
Life teaches us. To consume is to be consumed, but to cultivate is to create, to sow in the hope of reaping, to protect in order to receive.
A society makes its mark in history and in the hearts of the living only with its culture.
So, I beg you, support arts and culture; do not destroy them.
If by chance they do so, we would be curious to know one last thing first. Could it be the orchestration of the WTO directives devoid of any reference to the common good by being weaned on neo-liberalism that will inspire the destruction of our arts and culture? The question is relevant, since this type of destruction is already taking place symphonically in countries with neo-liberal government ideologies.
Quebec is not asleep. An infraspectacular resistance is building. The political maturity of the people of Quebec is reinforced in proportion to the predictable assaults of challenges to what makes the common good. It will withstand this civilized-seeming barbarity.
We will stand firm for culture!
In closing, here is a quotation from André Malraux, who said it in 1968.
Culture is what provides a foundation for man—I would add woman—when he no longer has the foundation of God.