Culture: the vague and unrealistic projects of Minister Lacombe

UPDATE DAY

Culture is not the CAQ's cup of tea and its new Minister of Culture and Communications may not change that.

Mathieu Lacombe took office only a few months ago, but his cultural projects are still vague and in some respects rather unrealistic. In an interview with the newspaper Le Devoir, last Tuesday, the young minister said he was ready to legislate to force the Netflix and Spotify of this world to put Quebec content forward!

Doubting nothing, Minister Lacombe had written the previous week to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pablo Rodriguez, asking him to take into account Quebec's specificity in his bill on online streaming. He would have liked the law to include a “compulsory and official consultation mechanism of the Government of Quebec”. Minister Rodriguez turned a deaf ear. With good reason.

UNTIMELY INTERVENTION

The bill being very close to being passed in the Commons after interminable debates, often sterile d Moreover, there was no risk that the untimely intervention of the Quebec minister would derail it. Even less than Pablo Rodriguez, an accommodating politician if ever there was one, changed anything about it. 

Admittedly, it's pretty cheeky for a CAQ minister to demand such a mechanism in a field of jurisdiction that has always been under federal jurisdiction. Especially since the CAQ government shouts loudly and tears its shirt off every time it thinks it perceives the slightest intrusion in its areas of jurisdiction, such as in health, for example.

Mathieu Lacombe would consider moving forward with a law that would force digital giants to give precedence to Quebec content on their platforms. It seems to me that the minister would have better things to do than cling to such a chimera. Even if the new federal law on broadcasting intends to force the digital giants to contribute to the creation of original Canadian content, the case is still far from being in the bag. When it is – within a year or two – we will still have to find a formula for the digital giants to showcase Canadian content on their platforms, whether English or French.&nbsp ;

Our Minister of Culture and Communications surely has better things to do than play Don Quixote. Shouldn't he be concerned, for example, with these famous blue spaces whose creation Prime Minister Legault announced with great fanfare soon two years ago? We know almost nothing yet, except that they will cost two or three times more than the 259 million we had planned. The minister could also do more useful work by rushing to modernize SODEC and increase its budgets. It is by far the most useful society of his ministry for the audiovisual sector.

MICHEL DESAUTELS, ACTOR

In June, Michel Desautels, author and animator as intelligent as cultivated, will retire. He is one of the last “radio-Canadians” who still know how to make the euphonic liaisons required by an impeccable French language. 

Many people are unaware that Michel Desautels began his career as an actor at the beginning of 1960. He was Paul, the inseparable companion of the young Yves Joli (Daniel Gadouas), the son of the couple that made up Gilles Pelletier and Gisèle Schmidt in the series Rue de l'anse, which I written with Jovette Bernier.