OMAR EL AKKAD and CAMPBELL CLARK
QUEBEC — Globe and Mail Update and Canadian Press Published on Tuesday, Sep. 23, 2008 3:12PM EDT Last updated on Tuesday, Mar. 31, 2009 8:49PM EDT
NDP Leader Jack Layton went on an all-out offensive Tuesday against the Conservative government's arts cuts, launching his broadsides from the province where outrage at Stephen Harper's cuts is most severe: Quebec.
“What you have is Mr. Harper is walking along, pretending he supports ... la nation québécois, and then what is he doing? He's grabbing a hold of the aorta of the creative process and putting the squeeze on it at the same time,” Mr. Layton said to loud applause at the Periscope Theatre in Quebec City.
Mr. Layton used the occasion to promise to reverse the Conservative government's multimillion-dollar cuts to cultural programs, hoping to capitalize on widespread anger at the Tories within the Quebec arts community.
And while responding to the newly released inflation numbers, Mr. Layton said increasing prices come as no surprise to Canadian families struggling to pay the bills every month.
“They get gouged by the banks, they get gouged by the gas companies, they get gouged by the cell phone companies,” the NDP Leader said, referencing his party's promise to clamp down on items such as text message fees.
“Our party has been pointing this out and trying to say that it's time we had a prime minister who stood up for the consumer here, instead of just listening to the boardroom table day in and day out, and saying there's nothing that can be done about this gouging,” he said.
Tuesday's announcement comes on the same day the NDP began airing an ad in Quebec that describes the Conservatives as “culture killers.” Mr. Layton stood by that language, saying that Mr. Harper's cuts are so strong that he should expect “strong language in return.”
The NDP ads come on the heels of a popular French video spoof on the popular website YouTube that is harshly critical of the cuts to arts and culture.
The video features Michel Rivard, well-known singer of the Quebec band Beau Dommage, sitting in front of a English-speaking panel asking for funding for a music festival.
The meeting breaks down when Mr. Rivard sings about a “phoque” — the French word for seal.
The panel accuses Mr. Rivard of swearing and the meeting soon degenerates into a confusing exchange of linguistic misunderstandings. The singer has nearly given up on making himself understood when one panel member abruptly asks him: “Are you a homosexual?”
The video, which had been watched over 48,000 times by Tuesday afternoon, ends by saying that every dollar invested in the cultural industry brings 11 times the benefits.
Mr. Layton said he's seen the video. “And my ads are described as harsh,” he chuckled.
Joined by his only Quebec MP, Thomas Mulcair, Mr. Layton promised to reverse $45-million in cuts made by the Conservatives. The NDP leader also made a number of other arts-related promises, including:
— introducing income-averaging for artists, a widespread practice in Quebec, to the rest of the country.
— providing an annual federal tax exemption of $20,000 for income earned from copyright and residuals.
— “Reforming” the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to “ensure that prime time television in French and English is written, directed, stars, and is about Canada and Canadians.”
— Protecting and funding Radio-Canada, the CBC, Telefilm, the Canadian Television Fund and the Canada Council.
The NDP estimates that it will cost about $125-million a year to fund its arts program promises, in addition to reversing $45-million in cuts. Mr. Layton admitted that the promises won't fix all the problems facing the arts community, “but it'll be an excellent first step.”
Tuesday's announcements are aimed squarely at Stephen Harper and the Conservatives, whose arts cuts have incurred the wrath of myriad Quebec cultural communities.
“We aren't going to let Mr. Harper turn the lights out on our stories, our heart, our soul,” Mr. Layton said.
The NDP leader also slammed the Conservatives for designing – and the Liberals for not defeating – Bill C-10, which gives the Heritage Department more power to deny funding to productions deemed offensive.
Even before the morning announcement at the Periscope Theatre, Mr. Layton was doing interviews for local media outlets in the city, pulling out a guitar and singing a song during one of them.
Mr. Harper responded to the criticism Tuesday by saying his government's cuts of culture programs may have riled artists at rich galas, but ordinary folks won't be upset.
Asserting his populism in Saskatoon while the culture cuts continue spark a backlash in Quebec, Mr. Harper said no government can pour money into programs without end, and working people will understand it. He called it “a niche issue for some.”
“I think when ordinary working people come home, turn on the TV and see a gala of a bunch of people at a rich gala all subsidized by the taxpayers claiming their subsidies aren't high enough when they know their subsidies have actually gone up, I'm not sure that's something that resonates with ordinary people,” Mr. Harper told reporters. “Ordinary people understand we have to live within a budget.
“I think this is a niche issue for some.”
He said new “culture killers” ad show how extreme the NDP is, but that the New Democrats, don't have a serious program for running the country, just empty words.
“When the NDP runs an ad like that, that just shows the extreme side of the NDP, a side of the NDP that has no serious economic program at all for the country,” he said.
Mr. Harper's cabinet approved cuts to three programs that provide assistance to artists. The first was revealed through a leak by Mr. Harper's office that ridiculed funding for left-wing artists, and the others by the posting of notices for potential applicants that the programs would not be continued.
Mr. Harper has insisted that his government has increased overall spending for Heritage Canada, the ministry responsible for arts and culture, among other things, by eight per cent since taking office in February, 2006. He said that even by a more narrow definition of spending on arts and culture, funding has gone up.
While the Conservatives' arts cuts have drawn condemnation from cultural groups across the country, nowhere has that condemnation been more vocal than in Quebec. With several ridings in the province considered up for grabs, opposition parties have seized on this outrage.
Speaking in Quebec City, Mr. Layton tied the arts cuts to Quebec's identity, vowing to protect the arts and artists that have “kept the flame of French culture strong in this city, in this province and right across Canada for four centuries.”
The NDP leader will spend a large portion of Tuesday in Quebec, focusing on the arts. He leaves Quebec City for Drummondville late Tuesday morning, before moving on to Montreal. There, he is expected to attend a high-profile rally against the Conservative cuts.
He likely won't be the only major party leader there – Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe is also expected to attend.
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