The minister achieved a historic victory at UNESCO on February 19th: member states acknowledged their duty to protect cultural diversity in digital spaces, in the name of the discoverability of French-language content on American entertainment platforms.
Eight million French speakers surrounded by 400 million English speakers, a youth expressing themselves in Parisian verlan learned on YouTube, a metropolis, Montreal, where French is no longer the main language in half of households. Quebec is going through a linguistic crisis that major digital platforms like Spotify or Netflix are exacerbating. Faced with this danger, the Quebec Minister of Culture, Mathieu Lacombe, went to the 19th session of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in Paris to convince UNESCO to extend the 2005 Convention on Cultural Diversity to digital spaces. A foundational text, but conceived before the dominance of American platforms.
Against all odds, Mathieu Lacombe won his bet: on Thursday, February 19th, member countries adopted the principle that states must also protect cultural diversity in digital spaces. During the [session].
[Context: The article discusses the efforts of the Quebec Minister of Culture, Mathieu Lacombe, to protect French-language content on digital platforms and the recognition of the importance of cultural diversity in digital spaces by UNESCO.]
[Fact Check: Check the actual date of the 19th session of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.]
