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Results: 1 - 15 of 1839
View Anthony Rota Profile
Lib. (ON)
It being 3:45 p.m., pursuant to order made on Monday, January 25, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at second reading stage of Bill C-269 under Private Members' Business.
View Anthony Rota Profile
Lib. (ON)
Pursuant to order made on January 25, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at third reading stage of Bill C-206, under Private Members' Business.
View Mélanie Joly Profile
Lib. (QC)
Mr. Speaker, I was having technical problems, not with the vote we just had, but with the previous vote on the motion moved by the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan. I would like to change my vote and vote in favour of the motion.
View Anthony Rota Profile
Lib. (ON)
All those opposed to the hon. minister's moving the motion will please say nay.
I hear no dissent. The House has heard the terms of the motion. All those opposed to the motion will please say nay.
There being no dissenting voice, the vote has been changed accordingly.
View Lenore Zann Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Lenore Zann Profile
2021-06-22 18:22 [p.9004]
moved that Bill S-205, An Act to amend the Parliament of Canada Act (Parliamentary Visual Artist Laureate), be read the second time and referred to a committee.
She said: Mr. Speaker, it gives me pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill S-205, which seeks to create the position of Parliamentary Visual Artist Laureate. This would be an officer of the Library of Parliament, similar to the current Parliamentary Poet Laureate's position. The mandate of the Parliamentary Visual Artist Laureate would be to promote the arts in Canada through Parliament, including by fostering knowledge, enjoyment, awareness and development of the arts. In this bill, the arts are defined as drawing, painting, sculpture, print-making, design, crafts, photography, videography and filmmaking.
I would like to thank the sponsor in the Senate of this bill, Senator Patricia Bovey, for her work in moving this legislation to the House. I would also like to acknowledge the artist Peter Gough of Nova Scotia, who was the originator of this wonderful idea. Sadly, Peter passed away before he could see his idea become a reality. However, there are many other incredible artists in Nova Scotia and across Canada who I am sure will be happy to see this bill move forward and honour his memory and the work of Canada's arts community.
Bill S-205 is based on the same concept, as I said, as the Parliamentary Poet Laureate. The Commissioner of Official Languages for Canada, the chairperson of the Canada Council for the Arts, and the president of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts have all provided their witness testimony about this important bill, as has the director of the National Gallery of Canada.
The position would have a two-year term with a mandate of promoting the arts in Canada through Parliament, including by fostering knowledge, enjoyment and development of the arts. I cannot emphasize enough or too greatly the contribution that Canadian artists make to our society, our collective well-being and our understanding of each other: lifelong Canadians, new Canadians, immigrants, first nations and refugees. The arts can break down barriers that exist between us, which is something we need today more than ever. Canada's artists have been illuminating what it means to be Canadian, where we have been and where we are going through many different media and from the views of many different cultures and regions. These are sometimes critical, but are reflective of who we are.
Over the past year and a half, we have been living through some of the most challenging times faced by our country in decades. The pandemic has forced us into isolation. It has led to loneliness and despair for many Canadians and for our youth, as well. I have to say our youth are looking forward to the day they can get out and enjoy the arts in person again and as my dear, departed niece, Maia, said to me shortly before she passed away this week, “What would life be without music? Life would be so depressing without music.” I have to say that I completely agree with her. Throughout this pandemic, Canada's artists have been there to provide us with a bit of light and hope while we await a time to come when we can be together again as friends, families and colleagues.
The arts are also economic generators. As the third-largest employer in Canada, the arts and culture sector employs some 600,000 Canadians and contributes 7.5% of our GDP. Research has demonstrated that the arts contribute positively to our health, education and the environment, and I suggest we need more arts in schools. The arts are mental health programs. Members can ask any child to tell their story, and I am sure they would rather do it through drawing, through writing or even through drama and putting on a personality, than try to speak as themselves. Sometimes this is much easier for people to do.
Where would the tourism industry be without Canada's arts and artists? The arts are a universal international language and the lens through which other nations recognize us as Canadians. It makes us different from the Americans. The Americans have their own arts and culture, but we need to support ours so we are not drowned out and so people can hear our own stories and our own voices, not just American ones.
The cultural components of international events are there not just to entertain but to show the world who we are, and we are very good at doing this. The Government of Canada has committed to restoring the cultural pillar to our foreign policy. We are depicting ourselves to the world through the arts, which on the international stage creates a greater understanding of who we are.
I believe it is time for our Parliament to have a visual artist laureate, whose works would preserve for posterity the events that grip us as parliamentarians and the work we do to make Canadians' lives better. I ask for members' support in making this initiative a reality. It is a tangible manner of thanking our artists for their contribution to Canadian society, especially during trying times such as these.
I would like to say the words of George Elliott Clark, our former parliamentary poet laureate. The poem is entitled “On the Proposal for a Visual Artist Laureate”:
The blank page—the blank canvas is— Undeniably delicious— Like fog, which obscures, then reveals— What Hope imminently congeals— A fantastic architecture— Imagination born secure: What Vision— the I of the eye— Had dreamt, is What answering Why. . .. Rainbows erupt from paint or ink— And film sculptures light—in a blink; A needle, weaving, is lyric, And whatever is shaped is epic. Art's each I articulate, Whose vision ordains a laureate.
View Matthew Green Profile
NDP (ON)
View Matthew Green Profile
2021-06-22 18:29 [p.9004]
Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's preamble talks about the selection process and about having a visual artist laureate selected from a list of three names reflective of Canada's diversity. Why is it important for the hon. member to ensure that Canada's diversity is reflected within her private member's bill?
View Lenore Zann Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Lenore Zann Profile
2021-06-22 18:29 [p.9005]
Mr. Speaker, I believe that the whole planet is made up of different stories, and people of different cultures view reality and view life from different perceptions. It is only by hearing and seeing and telling the tales of all of them that we see a whole beautiful earth and life. That is why it is so important to have diversity expressed much more than it already is here in Canada, so that more people can experience it and, hopefully, grow from that experience.
View Caroline Desbiens Profile
BQ (QC)
Mr. Speaker, I thank our colleague from Cumberland—Colchester for her bill, which we here in the House appreciate.
I would like to ask my colleague if it would not be more advantageous, in terms of spreading the load, to have a committee of artists in Parliament who could reflect diversity better than a single person could, since a single person might be biased and influenced by their own perceptions. Perhaps a committee garner more universal support than a single person.
View Lenore Zann Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Lenore Zann Profile
2021-06-22 18:31 [p.9005]
Mr. Speaker, that is a very thoughtful question, and I understand where the hon. member is coming from.
Here in Nova Scotia, we have an arts committee that the province has selected. Its members decide who gets which grants and things like that here in Nova Scotia. However, to be honest, art by committee is a very difficult thing. Each artist brings their own view and their own perspective to their work. We do not usually get 10 people, for instance, making a sculpture. We get one artist creating something themselves and then sharing that view with the world.
That is what this bill is focusing on: bringing a spotlight to individual Canadian artists. A different artist would be chosen every two years to have that spotlight and be able to share their works with Canadians.
View Kate Young Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Kate Young Profile
2021-06-22 18:32 [p.9005]
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Cumberland—Colchester for bringing this bill forward. As the mother of a visual artist who graduated from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, I am very proud and really happy that the member has done this.
Does the member think that Canadians really underestimate how the arts have impacted the people we are?
View Lenore Zann Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Lenore Zann Profile
2021-06-22 18:33 [p.9005]
Mr. Speaker, I think that the population in general underestimates how much the arts influence their lives and how much they need the arts to connect. I mean, during the pandemic, what did people do? They watched television, watched series and read books. It was the arts that helped keep people together and kept them sane.
Sadly, in my own riding, there was the loss of the life of one young man, an 18-year-old who loved the theatre. He dropped out of school and was not able to do what he loved to do. It was his happy place, but it was taken away from him because of COVID-19. I say that more arts will help Canadians. The arts help us to stay strong and help us mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
View Garnett Genuis Profile
CPC (AB)
Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House today to speak in support of Bill S-205 and to affirm the importance of the arts for our national life and indeed for all people throughout all time in history. The appreciation of beautiful things and the enjoyment of them is fundamental to the human condition. It is part of what elevates our minds and develops our thoughts and creates space for our greater understanding of goodness and of truth, in unity with beauty.
I was thinking of jumping-off points for talking about this issue. I was reminded that in the Catholic tradition, today is the feast of St. Thomas More. St. Thomas More is known better for some things than for others, although he was a composite figure known for his many different contributions to politics as well as to literature. He is best known for how his career ended: He was executed for refusing to endorse the king's marriage. He did so on a point of principle and a point of conscience. Regardless of whether members agree with the particular stand he took, we can all admire the courage of a politician who takes a stand on a principle and understands that the things they believe in are more important than their career or even their life.
St. Thomas More was also a great humanist. He talked about justice. He talked about human dignity and spoke explicitly about the connection between the ill treatment of people and crime. His writings and comments on those subjects have been sources of inspiration and content for people across the political spectrum. Particularly on the artistic side, he was someone who was able to develop ideas and present political points, indirectly perhaps, in the form of beautiful literary compositions.
If members have not read it, I encourage all to read Utopia. This is where we get the concept of utopia as sort of a political construct. He wrote this relatively short book, Utopia, in which he imagined a voyage to a faraway country called Utopia, and he describes in detail the characteristics, the modes of interaction and the beliefs of this fictitious people. Of course, he was living at a time when it was difficult to make certain kinds of political points directly. As his later career demonstrated, if one believed in certain things and expressed those opinions, there could be very dire consequences, not just in today's sense of people being cancelled but of actually being cancelled.
He spoke about certain ideas and raised certain questions through this description of an imaginary society that operated according to different norms and different rules. There were many questions at the time, and there still are, about what he really meant in many aspects of this book. Was he describing an ideal society? On the other hand, there were things about that society that seemed to be different from things that he defended and advocated as a politician. Maybe he was not describing an ideal society; maybe he was simply trying to expand the creative imagination. He was trying to give flower to possibilities by creating a space in which it was acceptable to think about things that would have been seen as maybe too subversive if he had been commenting directly on norms or policies in his own country.
I think what Utopia demonstrates is the beginning of the tradition of trying to subvert established ideas through the subtlety that is possible through art when it is is maybe harder to present those alternative concepts directly. There has since been this whole genre of utopian or dystopian literature, with dystopia, obviously, being the inverse of a utopia. There are many great modern works that pick up on this tradition and use this device of imagining another place, another time, another context to subtly comment on our current realities. Some of the works of Margaret Atwood, of course, are famous in this regard, such as The Handmaid's Tale. The Children of Men is another great dystopian novel that I have read recently, and I think it has a great deal of value in it.
The point I am trying to make is that art has value in and of itself. It is also a vehicle by which questions can be raised and thoughts can be provoked that are not as obvious, not as directly accessible through explicit political speech, and, indeed, possibilities can be opened that are unexamined otherwise or harder to argue for directly.
That can be the case perhaps because of direct repercussions for those who propose contrary ideas, but that can also be the case simply because certain concepts are so out of the mould that it is hard to envision what they would imply unless they are actually described in a more literary format. Thomas Moore is one example of someone who successfully provoked the creative imagination through art and literature.
We can see the value in Parliament creating this position of a visual artist laureate as appreciating our artists, as affirming the value of arts as a mechanism by which Parliament uses its position, its leadership role within the country to affirm the importance of the arts. However, it is also an opportunity to recognize, in our national life, so many of the conversations we have about the big challenging issues facing our country. Questions of justice, questions of human rights and questions of how we behave and respond to certain challenges can be proposed and shaped through art.
With that in mind, I am very supportive of the bill. It is one of many private members' bills before the House, some of which have come from the Senate, that do have great value and that Conservatives are pleased to support. From what I understand, Bill S-205, like Bill S-204, which we were speaking to last week, had the unanimous support of all senators. Like Bill S-204, it also has a great deal of support in the House. By all indication, I think all members will be supportive of the valuable provisions contained in that bill. It is one of those things hopefully parliamentarians can work together on across different important private members' bills as well as across different chambers to move these things forward.
In the context of the legislative timeline we have in front of us, unfortunately it looks like the Prime Minister is trying to malign the work of Parliament to create the impression that Parliament is not working. The reality is that this Parliament has worked substantially to move certain important issues forward; it just has not always worked in a way the government has liked.
One example the sponsor of this bill will be familiar with is the work being done at the Canada-China committee, a committee that was created even though the government did not want it created, a committee that undertook important studies, did important work on the situation in Hong Kong, a committee that has been part of discussions that have happened at other committees as well on recognizing the Uighur genocide, something that happened through the leadership of Parliament and not through the leadership of the government. Now we have a situation of Parliament asserting its rights to access documents. These are important cases of the leadership of this Parliament.
If the Prime Minister is critiquing Parliament, it has less to do with the fact Parliament is not working and more to do with the fact that, from his perspective, Parliament is working too well. Parliament is doing things the government may not like, but nonetheless Parliament has been able to lead, oftentimes through the collaboration of opposition parties and sometimes working with individual members of the government as well.
Nonetheless, we are in the situation now as we approach the end of the spring session where it looks very much like the Prime Minister, in trying to malign the work of Parliament, is trying to position himself to justify calling an election. If that happens, of course, it will put important legislative initiatives that have not yet passed in jeopardy.
We should reflect on the fact that as we possibly come to the end of the spring session, in some cases, we have bills that have been passed in the Senate and are now in the House. If the House could find a way of dealing with them, it would allow us to move forward ahead of the spring session so those bills could become law.
As I have described, this is important legislation. It recognizes the profound role that arts play in our national life, the profound role of beauty in the human experience and also the role arts can play in provoking questions and ideas that might not get discussed otherwise.
View Caroline Desbiens Profile
BQ (QC)
Mr. Speaker, what a fantastic way to wrap up this session of the House.
The purpose of the bill is to create the position of parliamentary visual artist laureate, who would be tasked not only with producing artistic creations, but also with promoting the arts in Canada, through Parliament, including by fostering knowledge, enjoyment and awareness and development of the arts among Canadians. That is a noble task, but it is an ambitious one for a single person.
Visual art can be universal, and carries across languages. Visual art tells a story, creates, projects the real and the abstract. According to the Regroupement des artistes en arts visuels du Québec, and by its very nature, art is a reflection of human expression and is intimately linked to its time. As a result, it is an exceptional vector for dissemination and dialogue, offering the public opportunities for interaction, which are indispensable to the development of society. That is a nice definition. Although art is often seen as a mirror on society, just like it, it is interpreted according to the beholder’s experience and history. This experience, our experience, tints our gaze with its colours, so that, where someone sees the ocean, another sees the sky; where someone senses solitude, another feels free; where one human sees the desire to exist or to remember, another may perceive hatred and even contempt.
Art is a powerful means of expression, and finding a person who can create it and express themselves without censure in a strong and pure work of art and in a context where everything is politicized is quite a feat. How can an artist express passion and neutrality, inspiration and representativeness? That is quite the challenge. Textures, colours, nuances, anything can be symbolic: positive for some, negative for others. Everything can be open to interpretation. Unfortunately, we have seen this on many occasions. Art commands freedom. While I am the last person to want to stop someone from creating and making a living from their creativity, the fact remains that the artist will shoulder heavy responsibilities.
As a committed songwriter myself, I know that using the right words is extremely important and has an impact on the listener. I once created a work where song met visual art. Entitled Chansons sur toiles, it won an award in Switzerland. It was a reflection, a mirror of the paintings of Charlevoix by Charlevoix artists. My songs were painted at that point in time.
Having met several visual artists, and being aware of the magnitude of the challenge involved in painting a song, I may have a better grasp of the challenge that awaits this person. Creating a visual expression of Parliament and of all the citizens it represents, often in a context of confrontation, or at least divergence, for everyone to see and absorb is not a simple task. The sad greyness of recent times that obliged us to remain unwillingly estranged from one another, unnaturally separated, only adds to the challenge the artist will have to face.
This being said, art has the power to move us, anger us, delight and amaze us again, and to make us think and evolve. All of this, as we see life from another perspective. We now understand just how much we need each other, how much every little gesture means and how intensely we feel the need to see each other again, embrace each other.
Art will undoubtedly reflect our emergence from the darkness. It does not often happen that every human being on the planet goes through the same tragedy, but the message of hope and love that will come out of this time will be all the more beautiful and grand. Art will have to reflect all this and more. It will have to guide us forward, focusing our attention on the values and hopes we all cherish, but not all for the same reasons. What influence will this artist have on climate change, for example, and on the different opinions expressed in Parliament?
How will the artist convey the fundamental difference between the Liberals' multiculturalism and Quebec's interculturalism, which is more innovative and more in keeping with reality, while remaining impartial? Rather than staying in isolation or feigning indifference, will they be free to express diversity, which is an impetus toward cultural sharing and exchange, in its most beautiful form, namely its uniqueness and recognition?
The artist will also be responsible for fostering and promoting the arts. They will have to find the right tone and then promote the arts, hence the importance, nay, the need for fairness. I do not know how much leeway and freedom they will have, given the obligation to do it through the Parliament of Canada.
Will they have to respect some historical or political criterion? This type of thing is very pervasive, and all communities must be assured that the work will be shown for what it is, for its cultural, social and historical value, and contextualized within the experience of every member of the community, rather than as one in a succession of specifically Canadian works that remain within the strict confines of Canadian values, which are sometimes imposed by the powers that be at the time.
No, the artist must be a person from Medicine Hat, with all that that entails, a Franco-Saskatchewanian, a Huron-Wendat, a Franco-Ontarian from northern Ontario, an Acadian, a Montrealer from Côte-des-Neiges, the Plateau or Hochelaga, a north shore resident or a Nisga’a, a person from Charlevoix, a Magdalen Islander, a person from Lac Saint-Jean or an Innu, with all the richness that every story, every root and every conviction carries.
That is why I have my doubts when I think about who could become the parliamentary artist and bear this weighty responsibility worthy of every virtue. Since the Bloc Québécois is certainly not against virtue, we hope that the artist will be up to this demanding task. What makes a nation belongs to the nation, and its expression belongs to its artists, who have different and at times opposite visions. That is exactly what allows a society to evolve upward.
That is why my humble reflections have led to this conclusion: limiting Parliament to a single signature, free as it may be in its personal interpretation, means giving the power of messaging to a single spirit, however open it may be. That can only limit the immense openness this Parliament needs to be able to express all of our various visions, for now and for the future. That is what I hope for Parliament and for the artist who will inhabit it.
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