MRC Pontiac holds cultural policy consultation

Brett Thoms
Shawville April 21, 2023
The MRC Pontiac, in partnership with the Montreal-based consultancy firm ArtExpert held a series of public consultations on updating the cultural policy of the MRC. There were five consultations in total, with three being held in-person over last weekend, popping up in Shawville, Fort-Coulonge and Otter Lake, and another two held online.
This is the first time the MRC’s cultural policy has been reopened since 2004.
According to Sabrina Ayres, an economic development commissioner at the MRC Pontiac and the official representing MRC at the consultation in Shawville, cultural policy includes a variety of areas of life, including: language, journalism, visual arts, drama, music, and education and art activity programs at public residences, among other things.
“This is really important for us for you guys to be comfortable to share your opinions, your thoughts and your views as to what culture in the Pontiac and how we want to see grow in the future,” said Ayres during the consultation introduction. “Our old cultural policy was approved in 2004, so it is going on 20 years and is well overdue for being updated. We would really like to see how we can update it to fit what you guys are doing with your different organizations so that just can help propel you further future and grow.”
The consultation in Shawville was attended by over 20 people at Café 349, many of which who represented different cultural organizations in the Pontiac.
ArtExpert facilitated the consultation. Before asking the participants for their input, André Courchesne, an academic in the field of cultural policy and ArtExpert representative, presented an analysis of the Pontiac’s current cultural state, which included a demographic analysis, an overview of what the region offered and assessments of the area’s strengths, opportunities, threats and weaknesses in the cultural space.
Courchesne explained that the purpose of the demographic overview is to capture some underlying features of the region which would allow the development of a specific plan, as opposed to a one size fits all approach.
“Our organization is doing the same type of cultural planning for cities and regional municipalities,” said Courchesne in an interview with THE EQUITY after the consultation.
“So right now we’re working in another small town, L’Assomption, northeast of Montreal, which has 25,000 people. It has a lot of heritage buildings, but a lot of issues as well with those heritage buildings. So the issues differ from one city to the other. And so our methodology is just to allow each city or each regional municipality to identify its own issue, and come up with a plan about these issues.”
Starting with the demographic overview of the region, the analysis made a few key findings that would inform how the region’s cultural policy could develop relative to the rest of the province. Most of the numbers listed below come from the 2021 census.
First, the Pontiac has a relatively older population compared to the rest of the province, with a population of those 65 and older significantly higher than the rest of the Outaouais and the province.
Second, the MRC Pontiac has a slightly higher percentage of those who obtained a college degree, while significantly fewer people who obtained a university degree than the rest of the province and Outaouais.
Third, the MRC Pontiac has a relatively higher percentage of people on the lower end of the income spectrum than the rest of the region and province.
Fourth, the MRC Pontiac has a far higher degree of English as a first language speakers than the rest of the province, representing 57.6 per cent of the population compared to 14.7 Outaouais and 7.6 in the entire province. However, there is a slightly smaller proportion of bilingual speakers compared to the Outaouais in general and slightly more compared to the entire province.
Finally, the demographic analysis found that Pontiacers were less likely to move, making for a stable population. “Communities within the MRC are much more stable (66.8 per cent) than the Outaouais average (59.3 per cent). The MRC welcomed much more new residents from other provinces (7.8 per cent) than the Outaouais (5.3 per cent ) and Quebec (less than 1 per cent) averages in the last 5 years.”
After the demographic policy, the presentation tried to capture the cultural geography of the region, listing the heritage sites, cultural organizations and leisure locations, which included places like libraries, community centres, churches, museums and more.
Other note-worthy numbers on the cultural climate were included from 2016, which found that 132,090 tourists visited the region, 4,737 cabins existed to host tourists and 365 workers in the industry representing 6 per cent of the working population.
ArtExpert’s analysis listed Pontiac’s cultural policy’s “strengths” as:

-Multiple summer cultural events in many different locations throughout the territory
-Libraries that host cultural activities
-Inclusion of cultural recreation sites within community centers
-Rise in the number of designated cultural venues within schools with public support
-A territorial partnership to support cultural organizations in their grant applications
-A new MRC budget for cultural events
-A public art collection and the acquisition policy of the MRC
-Heritage sites listed
-Many tourists
-The MRC’s willingness to create cultural development partnerships

ArtExpert’s analysis listed Pontiac’s cultural policy’s “opportunities” as:

-Important non-resident population
-An important population with Indigenous roots
-Gradual rise of the senior population, which favours intergenerational cultural activities
-Rise of the number of college graduates
-A stable population
-A partnership with the CALQ
-A rich heritage
-A cultural facility plan that can be used for professional activities as much as cultural leisure
-Multiple municipal agreements on activities and cultural leisure spaces
-The public recognition of volunteer work
-The MRC’s website and Facebook page
-The support of public libraries’ collections and assets
ArtExpert analysis listed Pontiac’s cultural policy ‘threats’ as:
-Not densely populated territory
-The disproportionate ratio of seniors versus youth
-A lower average income which reduces the earned income of arts organizations and events
-Linguistic accessibility

- [Lack of] High-speed internet

ArtExpert analysis listed Pontiac’s cultural policy’s “weaknesses” as:
-Low public support for cultural organizations
-No professionnal venue
-No organization is recognized by the CALQ or the SODEC
-No official listing of other heritage sites
-Not enough coordination between municipalities on cultural events and activities
-Limited tourist accommodations
-Little media coverage outside of the region

After this analysis was presented to the group, the actual consultation began. The room was first split into two discussion groups who would discuss issues and then present their answers to the room.
The first question posed to the room was: What doesn’t work in terms of culture in the Pontiac.
During these questions, some participants in consultation noted the lack of accuracy in certain aspects of ArtExpert’s analysis, such as missing the importance of music festivals like the Shawville Fair or overestimating the role of libraries and missing artPontiac’s relationships with the CALQ.
In terms of other criticism of the Pontiac’s cultural space, a theme was the lack of coordination between different cultural associations and organizations in general in the Pontiac. One example was that artPontiac found it difficult to run programs in partnership with schools due to the lack of effective communication. Other points was the difficulty and short timelines in the grant process or the lack of a reconginzed central forum outlining all the cultural events in an area.
The next question posed to the group was:
What works? What do we want to keep?
Some positive aspects of the Pontiac cultural space pointed out by participants was that there are a lot of artists, musicians and a diversity of events for such a small population. The various cultural organizations and venues that continually put on events were also listed as strengths. Finally, participants commented that local media generally does a good job in ensuring that local artists and cultural events are extensively covered.
The third question was :
Which innovation would you want in the next Cultural Policy?
One area participants proposed change in the way cultural grants are structured and delivered. As opposed to grants being offered one-year basis, some participants proposed having access to grants that would be offered over a period spanning several years on a sustainable basis, which would offer groups the ability to undertake more long-term and deliberative projects.
Another idea was to find a way to attract some professional support staff who could perform administrative work for multiple projects as full-time employees, as opposed to relying on unpaid volunteers. This staff could work on several different projects at once to make it economically viable and allow groups access to reliable expertise.
More public spaces and the construction of more housing, especially for tourists, was also mentioned as way to draw in more people and boost the cultural economy.
This is just a snippet of the over two-hour consultation process, wherein many more ideas were mentioned.
According to Courchesne, this consultation represented the second stage of ArtExpert’s work in helping MRC’s form a revised cultural policy. Once all the consultations are concluded, they will collate the results and present them to the MRC’s Cultural Committee, who then actually form the policy.
“We will go to them and say ‘This is everything that we understand from the consultation. We’ll regroup them according to like big titles, like the cultural participation of citizens, or the funding to arts organizations, or all to protect and promote our own heritage and history,” said Courchesne. “So we bring this to the committee and the committee will decide, ‘Okay, which of these things can we do in the next five years?’ Some may be small steps, some may be larger ones.”
Ayres concluded that going forward, the MRC Pontiac plans to hold consultations like these and update the cultural policy every five years as opposed to allowing a 20-year gap to develop again.
Overall Courchesne noted that the scale of community participation in the consultation he was seeing was encouraging.
“I think it’s what’s very special is the strong community participation that I feel here,” said Courchesne. “People are very committed to their community. This is very special that you don’t see that in all communities. Most of the time you see the artists or you see the arts organization, but right now, we feel that the real people, the people in the community are participating in to this consultation. So it’s very precious.”