For a government facing an election, there’s no more abundant fruit than the kind you may never have to deliver. Quebec’s Liberal government, trailing its main rival by 7 points with an election coming on Oct. 1, is heaping the platter with promised support for cultural projects, and not always getting called out for it.
Petite-Vallée is a tiny town in the Gaspé, whose annual moment of glory is its ten-day Festival en chanson, an important showcase for francophone singer-songwriters. This year’s shindig, which ends Saturday, , happened without the historic theatre and inn that anchored the event’s 35 previous editions, because both burned to the ground since last time.
On this year’s opening day, Quebec culture minister Marie Montpetit arrived with a promise to provide $6.5-million of the $10-million needed to build a new theatre complex. It’s a promise she may never have to deliver, but its sincerity wasn’t questioned, even by the high-profile political rivals on the scene.
Former Parti Québécois leader Pierre Karl Péladeau was there, to view the concert tent his Quebecor sponsorship had provided, and so was former PQ premier Pauline Marois, honorary president of a festival fundraising committee. Péladeau in particular loves to poke a finger at Liberal actions that look at all cynical. But this francophone jamboree may be too hallowed a thing, and too close to his heart, for him to accuse Montpetit of waving money at a constituency whose PQ incumbent isn’t running this time.
The money pledged to Petite-Vallée is miniscule compared to the $600 million it would cost to execute promises made in the Liberals’ cultural policy, as revealed days before the Quebec National Assembly adjourned in June. Opposition parties immediately dismissed that voluminous document as an election ploy.
Premier Philippe Couillard denied the charge, while daring the other parties to come up with anything as thorough. “If a party is not costing out its cultural policy,” he said, “you can draw your own conclusions about its level of engagement and rapport with the cultural milieu.”
Montpetit responded in kind, boasting that “the Liberal party is the most fervent defender of Quebec culture,” and that her party had “practically created all the major Quebec cultural institutions.” Glaring exceptions come to mind, including the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, but campaign rhetoric is often grandiose, and that’s how Couillard and Montpetit responded: with campaign rhetoric.
The intriguing thing is that the Liberals seem to be staking out culture as an election issue, one that they can own. This year’s flap about the threat posed to Quebec francophone culture by online services such as Netflix resonated deeply. The Liberals in Quebec vowed to tax and regulate, as the Liberals in Ottawa did not.
The poll-leading Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) has had little presence on that file or any other cultural issue, beyond fretting over immigrants whose French is less than fluent or who wear head coverings. The PQ says they would force the likes of Netlix to offer a minimum of 70-per-cent Quebec content, but there’s little chance the third-place party will be in a position after Oct. 1 to move on that ambitious target. None of its cultural promises are costed out.
Imagine the ruling party in any other province daring the opposition, during an election campaign, to match a cultural policy worth $600-million. If Alberta’s NDP Premier Rachel Notley did that, United Conservative leader Jason Kenney would probably declare that the day of feasting on his rivals had arrived. The howls of “tax and spend” would echo from here to election day.
But Quebec elections always have a potent cultural aspect. Usually it’s independence, which, for its keenest advocates, is the biggest cultural question after language survival. But not even the PQ is talking about referendums or preconditions this time. François Legault, the former PQ minister who leads the CAQ and could become the next premier, has renounced his support for an independent Quebec, though his party continues to call itself “a new nationalist project.”
If Legault wins, artists and cultural organizations in Quebec will be singing a new song, and it won’t be a happy one. The Liberals’ deluxe cultural policy will pass from possibility to mythology, as the blueprint for a new golden age that never was.