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House Hansard - 278

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 8, 2024 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 278 - Feb/8/24
Mr. Denis Trudel
  • Feb/8/24 5:41:13 p.m.
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Duly noted, Madam Speaker. What about your Hélène Monette Boulevard?My GPS is no use; recognition for poets, it would seemIs harder to find than organic and fair trade cocaineI call for poetryFrom Speak White to Speak WhatFrom Michèle Lalonde to Marco MiconeBy those who blaze the trailsAnd those who draw tears from the pageBy Rodney Saint-Éloi and all our diasporasBy Herménégilde Chiasson, Georgette LeblancAnd all of Acadia straight in the eyeLet the path of poetry stretch outFrom St-Venant-de-Paquette to WendakeLet an artist from Trois-Rivières climb Duplessis's statueTo sculpt Godin's face up thereI call for poetryIn songs, on pages, in rap barsBy Gilbert Langevin, Nicole Brossard, Sol or Manu MilitariIn its noblest forms or proudly bastardizedBy our inspired successorsApathy will never recoverBy its peaks and rootsIts iridescent brothers and incandescent sistersIts promises that we will hold highWith arms open wideI call for poetryI call for poetryHoping that you will answer I have a minute and a half left, but I do not know what I could possibly add to David Goudreault's words, what he just said, what I just read. What a magnificent poem. Not many members in the House are artists, which is too bad. We have a lot of doctors and a lot of lawyers. We have engineers. That is fine, but it seems to me that art would help us in our debates. It would help our debates if there were more room for art, music and visual arts. There is also cinema, of course. I could also talk about the precariousness of artists' situations. That is another debate. It is important, but we do not talk about it very much. In Quebec, 80% of artists earn less than $20,000 a year. That is the poverty line. These are the people we see on our phones, watch on television and hear on the radio. They live in precarious situations, and yet they are the spice of life in this country. They are what makes life worth living. In fact, for people who spend most of their lives on their devices, we see images, we see photos and we see videos. There are people who create them. There are people who come up with all that. There are ordinary people, and then there are artists. These people need to be paid properly, like everyone else. They have to be able to earn a living, because we need them. We need them more than ever in these difficult times.
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