NDP Leader Jack Layton and Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe joined the audience at a Tuesday night concert in Montreal organized by artists protesting $45 million in cuts to culture funding announced by the Conservative government last August.
Layton had already attacked the cuts at a campaign event in Quebec City on Tuesday afternoon, where he said a New Democratic government would immediately cancel the Conservatives' $45-million cut to arts funding, and invest $125 million more.
"One of the key things we must do, before we start giving $50-billion tax giveaways to banks and oil companies, is to protect and promote the arts," Layton said. "We have to begin that project by protecting the artists themselves."
He also pledged to give the CBC and Radio-Canada "stable, sure and appropriate funding," while also protecting Telefilm and the Canadian Television Fund.
Layton said the NDP is committed to Canadians being able to make programming in French and English "made and produced by people here and starring people from here," while Stephen Harper's Conservatives have tried to "turn off the floodlights on our stories, on our hearts, on our souls." More...
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