44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 16, 2022 02:00PM
Mr. Speaker, I am so pleased to speak to this issue.
Right now, I am an MP, a politician, but in a former life, I was an actor and an artist. I was involved in quite a few films and TV series. I had theatre companies. I am of course deeply concerned about the fate of culture and artists, and that is exactly what I want to talk about today: culture.
I do not want to get bogged down in the technical details, the algorithms, the streaming services. I am going to try to focus the debate on the substance of Bill C‑11. To me, what is at stake here is Quebec culture.
I apologize in advance to the interpreters. My speech is about Quebec culture, so I think they might have a very hard time interpreting some of the terms. My anglophone colleagues might not understand what I am talking about. However, the salient point is that ours is a minority culture within the greater North American context. We are in the middle of a technological revolution, and Quebec culture is in danger.
Let me begin by quoting one of my very good friends, filmmaker Pierre Falardeau, who had this to say about culture:
For me, that is what Quebec culture is all about. It's a direct, physical, deeply sensual connection with this land of the Americas. Culture is a landscape that grips your heart. It's a mountain, a lake, a valley that wells up from the depths of your youth. Quebec culture is a verse by Gaston Miron, [the images] of Pierre Perrault, the colour of the snow in a painting by Clarence Gagnon. Culture is also the smell of my mother's cooking. It's watching hockey on TV on Saturday nights, freshly bathed, hair perfectly combed, in your flannel PJs that smell of laundry soap and the wind. Quebec culture is also about my aunts being exploited by Imperial Tobacco in Saint-Henri. It's my uncle, a Lithuanian immigrant, who could walk on his hands. [It was wonderful.] Quebec culture is my father, who taught me about justice, solidarity and love for my people. Culture is the back alleys downtown. It is Reggie Chartrand's fists. It's a song from old France that takes you back 400 years, for no apparent reason. It is Champlain. It's the curve of the roof on our houses. Quebec culture is my girlfriend's “spaghatte” sauce, my couscous from “Faubourg à m'lasse” and my children rapping in French. That's what culture is all about. It's a thousand little things that give life its flavour.
Obviously, a great many other things are associated with culture. Quebec culture has a vocabulary all its own. In fact, Quebeckers talk about each season in a way no one anywhere else does. I will start with winter, represented in our national song, “Mon pays, ce n'est pas un pays, c'est l'hiver”, or “my country is not a country, it's winter”. Quebec culture is understanding the difference between frais, frisquet, froid and frette—cool, chilly, cold and bloody freezing. Quebec culture is coming out of blowing snow into slush and freezing rain. Quebec culture is the myriad colourful expressions that describe how Quebeckers “attachent leur tuque avec de la broche”, or brace themselves, against the long, cold winter and hang in there, even if “ils en ont ras le pompon”—they are fed up—even if “ils ont peur de péter au frette, de ne pas passer l’hiver”, in other words, even if they fear they will not make it through to spring. “Pas passer l'hiver”, not making it through the winter. Where else in the world would anyone say that?
Quebeckers also have a thousand and one ways to celebrate spring, from marvelling at ice jams and fiddleheads to enjoying the maple sugar season. The word “sugar” evokes a series of images and smells that resonate with Quebeckers, capturing their world and their memories. That one word says so much.
Spring means breaking out the shorts and t-shirts at the first rays of warm sunshine as though dressing for warm weather will make it arrive sooner. However, a day that cool would have us reaching for a sweater in the fall.
Quebeckers also have a thousand and one ways to soak up the summer, from Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day to jam making and corn husking parties. We love getting back to nature and visiting outfitters in controlled harvesting zones, or ZECs. We have to take advantage while we can still have all the windows down.
Naturally, we also have a thousand and one ways to enjoy the fall, from picking cherries to admiring the fall colours. As the days start getting shorter, we quibble with our roommates over the best starting lineup for our beloved hockey team's upcoming season. Even after a miserable season, as soon as they pick up a few wins in a row, we already feel like the cup is within reach. As Quebeckers, we always feel the cup is within reach, even when it is far away, although right now it seems a long way off.
Santa Claus and the tooth fairy may be universal, but Quebec has its very own fictional characters, like Séraphin, Donalda, Ti-Coune, Lyne la pas fine, and Capitaine Bonhomme. Then there are some even more mythical characters, so mythical that they are known by all but have never been seen. There is Roger Bontemps, Madame Blancheville and the guy everyone loves, Joe Bleau, the most famous everyman in all of Quebec. No doubt he comes from Saint-Glinglin.
Saint-Glinglin, now that is interesting. Everyone knows it is far away, but nobody knows where it is. Quebec can be pretty disorienting to outsiders, what with our eastern border being on the north shore and our southern border being in the Eastern Townships. We also have square “arrondissements”, not circular ones, and quiet revolutions. Quebec is the only place where piggybacking on someone else's idea is called “faire le pouce”, and where sacred words can be used in decidedly profane ways, as long as one has the decency to blush.
Quebec culture is all kinds of things. It is images, the luminosity of a Jean-Paul Lemieux, the abandon of a Riopelle, the impetus captured in a Krieghoff, the human form captured in a Corno. It is an aesthetic that does not even define itself as such. It is touchstone tomes that span the gamut from Flore laurentienne to L'Almanach du peuple.
Quebec culture can feel like one big family. Some names speak volumes in a single word. In Quebec, everyone knows who Clémence is. Janette, Dédé, Boucar and Ginette? Sure, we know all about them, and of course we all know Céline.
Unfortunately, Quebec culture also means a lot of political and linguistic misunderstandings with English Canada. When we say “secularism”, the English-language media calls it “racism”. When we say “academic freedom”, it is translated in English Canada as “racism”. When we talk about the survival of the French language, that too is translated as “racism”.
Quebec culture is about expressing modern ideas using new French words: clavardage for chat, courriel for email, pourriel for spam, and balado for podcast, not to mention all the words that were invented at the same time as the object itself. The motoneige, or snowmobile, is a perfect example of a Quebec invention. The snow blower and car mats were invented in Quebec too. Let us not forget poutine, Quebec's national dish. This decadent dish has conquered the world. Quebec culture is about all of those things.
As they say, everything is interconnected, or “tôuttt est dans tôuttt”, as Raôul Duguay put it in his song Tôuttt etô bôuttt. As for Ariane Moffatt, she wants it all, as she says in her song, Je veux tout. That is what is at stake with Bill C-11.
If we allow our media to plunge into even more hardship, if we neglect to support our creators and our platforms, all these great Quebec sayings will gradually get erased, and all these cultural touchpoints that still bring us together today will become foreign to a whole new generation, including my children's generation. This will sever the bond that ties us to our history and to everything that makes us who we are today.
Such is the risk of a people becoming nothing more than one demographic among many. A culture, especially a minority culture like ours, is a precious and delicate garden that could be swept away and destroyed by the fierce winds of technological globalization. If that happens, the world would lose our unique and irreplaceable colour from its spectrum. That would be a tragedy for the entire world, because when a culture dies, it is a loss for all of humanity.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right. We have to get going and pass this bill. Even before the last election, I was getting calls and emails from my artist friends, telling me I was lucky because I made it to Parliament. Our artists are starving. Distinguished artists, people who are really immensely talented, are not enjoying the fruits of their labour. It is shocking.
On YouTube, people automatically go for English content. We have to make French content discoverable. It has to show up, or people will not seek it out. That is why it is incredibly important to pass the bill as soon as possible.
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Madam Speaker, you cannot put a number on success. If an artist produces a great song, that song needs to be heard.
The problem right now is that even well-known artists who are very successful in Quebec cannot make it on major platforms like Spotify and YouTube because they do not show up there.
We must ensure that successful artists from Quebec are on the platforms and available for people to listen to. That is the big issue.
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Madam Speaker, I do not know if there is some technical reason that makes French-language content appear more frequently or whether we need to use algorithms. I am not an expert in that area. In any case, the issue remains the same.
Bill C‑11 gives us a sort of guarantee that the major platforms will be asked to work on discoverability. It is not perfect. For the time being, we are not going to get involved in that. We will rework the bill. If there is reason to get involved in that area, the CRTC will decide in the end.
I do believe that the message is fairly clear in the bill: We want French-language content to be visible everywhere for anyone who wants to consume it.
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