Five white men debated culture – at least the national debates had more diversity
By Denis Carmel
MONTREAL – With a week to go until the election, a debate on culture was organized, entirely in French, by the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (CDCE) and the University of Montreal’s Department of Communication, and was aired today by CPAC. The five major parties sent candidates to debate: Steven Guilbeault, for the Liberals, Steve Shanahan, for the Conservatives, Martin Champoux, for the Bloc Québécois, Alexandre Boulerice, for the NDP and Mathieu Goyette for the Green Party.
SRC’s Catherine Perrin was the host. As such, she also moderated the debate, ensuring everybody had equitable time and asking questions that were written by the debate organizers. And of course, the questions reflected the concerns of the CDCE.
Not all participants of today’s debate had the same level of familiarity of the issues and some of the questions were quite narrow in scope and demanded a level of prior knowledge. For example, when Perrin asked if the parties would commit to the modernization of the Private Copy Levy, only the Bloc representative knew what it was. It was obvious the others had no idea what it was and tried to skate around the question to the best of their abilities.
On the question of modernizing of the Broadcasting Act, Steven Guilbeault restated his party’s platform about reintroducing new legislation within the first 100 days of the new government (Christmas time).
Of course, talking about broadcasting legislation triggered a blaming exercise: The Liberals for calling an election that put an end to Bill C-10 and the Conservatives for filibustering, which delayed the Bill’s adoption.
On discoverability, the Conservative candidate clearly improvised by suggesting the creators invest in publicity to increase their discoverability. The Conservatives clearly oppose the notion of discoverability, which they do not understand, while this audience has clearly bought into the concept. He mentioned that in radio there are quotas, which saw the moderator probe and try to corner him by using a segment of the Conservative platform saying that a Conservative Government will reduce regulation to suggest they might reduce quotas.
The Conservative also took flak on the party’s proposed review of the mandate of CBC Television, which prompted a response by Steven Guilbeault who said the Conservatives could not be trusted and that they change their positions on a whim. Gun control was brought up as an example.
This debate is the only one being held on culture during this election (the CDCE organized a similar debate during the 2019 election).
Martin Champoux, the Bloc representative, indicated when he introduced himself at the start of the debate that he felt culture had been absent from discussions during this election.
As much as we believe in the importance of culture, we must recognize that this debate probably will not alter the result of this election.
If this election was called by the Liberals in the hopes of enabling them to better govern by having a majority, which would have allowed them to pass C-10, for example, available polling suggests it will be even more difficult to govern since it seems a Liberal majority is beyond the party’s reach. They might even end up needing the support of two opposition parties to pass legislation instead of one, as in their last mandate.
That would make the passing of a new Broadcasting Act even more difficult.
Image from CPAC’s coverage of the debate.
