Source : Montreal Gazette

Everyone in Quebec's cultural milieu can breathe a deep sigh of relief. It turns out Stephen Harper is actually a guy who cares about culture.

That's the story the Globe and Mail "broke" on its front-page Friday, with a piece in which the prime minister defended his government's controversial decision to slash $45 million worth of culture spending. Harper made it clear in the Globe that he is no philistine - he proudly noted that he is a passionate piano player who is known to tinkle the ivories while unwinding at 24 Sussex Drive.

Now I may be going out on a limb here, but I think folks in our province's arts and entertainment world are not going to be too impressed by Harper's declarations of support for the cultural sector. The fact is that Quebec's artists are in a full-blown rage over what they perceive as the Tory government's contempt for the artistic community in this country.

"Touring is how we explain ourselves to the world. What we think about, how we see the rest of the world. The arts do affect everybody. I don't know how much more loudly I could say it.

There already have been major demonstrations in both Montreal and Quebec City decrying the government's cuts to programs like PromArt and Trade Routes, which help Canadian artists export their work abroad, and the milieu is promising that they'll be making a lot more noise about this issue between now and Election Day Oct. 14. Prominent Quebec arts personalities - from chansonnier Gilles Vigneault to actor Raymond Bouchard - have made pleas to Quebecers to vote for anyone except the Conservatives to punish them for these cutbacks.

What's intriguing is that this has been such a hot-button topic here in Quebec ever since news leaked out from Ottawa about the Tory culture cuts in mid-August. It's been splashed all over the front pages of the francophone newspapers, generated all kinds of heated debate in the electronic media here and, perhaps most significantly, has been a major talking-point for politicians trying to woo Quebec voters. The Liberal Party's Heritage critic, Denis Coderre, has promised an all-out war with the Conservatives over these cuts, Quebec Culture Minister Christine St-Pierre has been desperately calling for an emergency meeting with Tory Heritage Minister Josée Verner to discuss the issue, and the other party leaders routinely talk about culture - when they're speaking in French.

Meanwhile in the Rest of Canada, culture has barely registered on the radar in this election campaign so far. I was talking earlier this week to noted Toronto filmmaker, screenwriter and actor Don McKellar and he was bemoaning the fact that culture appeared not be on the election agenda. He was flabbergasted when I told him that politicians of all stripes were talking up a storm about culture here in Quebec.

So why is it so much of a bigger deal chez nous? Part of the answer is that the Quebec arts milieu's unhappiness with the Harper regime has been on the boil for some time now. The first signs of major discontent surfaced in the summer of 2006 when local film producers went ballistic over the lack of federal funding for Quebec's booming film scene. In June of that year, federal funder Telefilm Canada received requests for a total of $52 million in financing for Quebec projects, but the Montreal-based agency had only $4 million to dole out. That cash shortfall killed a number of high-profile film projects, including Robert Lepage's planned film version of his acclaimed stage show La trilogie des dragons.

The province's top producers went en masse to Ottawa to meet Bev Oda, the Tory Heritage minister at the time, and they were shocked when Oda dismissed them out of hand. The Harper government lost more credibility with the film folks when Jean Charest's provincial government stepped up to the plate and gave the industry a one-time added injection of $10 million, which allowed several of the endangered films to finally be shot.

Then came the furor over Bill C-10, the federal government's highly-controversial legislation designed to allow the Heritage minister to deny tax credits to film and TV productions if she decides the film or TV show is "contrary to public policy."

This proposed law elicited howls of protest from people in the film and TV biz right across the country but the reaction was particularly virulent in Quebec where - perhaps unsurprisingly - the concept of the federal government potentially censoring films and TV shows sparked considerable outrage.

I remember hearing veteran film producer Roger Frappier talking about Bill C-10 in a radio interview, noting that his most recent film, a disturbing sexually-explicit drama titled Borderline, might well have not gotten made if the legislation had been in place at the time. Frappier was just incensed.

But the suspicion about Harper's cultural policies isn't just a result of these recent conflicts. That culture is an election issue in Quebec and not in the rest of the country is really just a reflection of the differences between the two places. Homegrown culture is of great importance for franco Quebecers, in stark contrast to the situation in the ROC where the cultural scene continues to be dominated by its powerful neighbour to the south.

In Quebec, the top 20 TV shows are almost always all Quebec productions. Turn on franco radio and you'll hear a steady stream of made-in-Quebec music, and music fans here are as enthused about Pierre Lapointe and Les cowboys fringants as they are about Madonna and U2. This summer wasn't the best ever at the box office for Québécois films but the share of overall ticket sales for local flicks remains at just under 10 per cent. That's still fantastic compared to the situation for local films in many places, including English Canada.

People here consume local culture in a big way and most realize that these films, TV shows and albums cannot be made without some government assistance.

The other thing is that Quebecers are enormously proud of the province's uncanny knack for spawning artists that resonate with audiences all over the globe, from the Cirque du Soleil to Céline Dion to Denys Arcand to Robert Lepage. And most here understand that these artists, especially early in their careers, needed programs like PromArt and Trade Routes to help defray the costs of exporting their work to other markets.

Convincing people in Toronto and Calgary that culture needs public money to survive is a much tougher sell than it is in Quebec, which is likely why no political party is putting culture on the front-burner outside our province.

But will the discontent felt by Quebec's culture vultures translate into losses for the Conservatives in the coming election? That's far from clear. Some in the cultural milieu in Montreal fear the support for public arts funding may well be much stronger in this city, which has one of the highest concentrations of artists per capita in North America, and that people in more rural areas might be more sympathetic to Harper's view - as stated in the Globe Friday - that the government shouldn't be "funding things that people actually don't want."

© Montreal Gazette