Canada’s Cultural Leaders Ask: Hélène Who?

Since Canada’s new prime minister named Hélène Chalifour Scherrer to head the country’s culture ministry, cultural groups have been asking Hélène who? She is unknown in the cultural world. “Her very specific interest in amateur sport and the cries of rapture with which the Canadian Olympic Committee greeted her appointment to the portfolio, which does includesport, suggests she may lack the broad vision needed to tackle the large range of regulatory and funding issues that lie at the core of the Canadian Heritage mandate. Comments made to the CBC by her spokesman immediately after her swearing-in about running a “tighter ship” at a ministry that wasn’t going to be a “bank” any more didn’t help.”