{"id":73329,"date":"2016-03-31T23:11:34","date_gmt":"2016-04-01T03:11:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=73329"},"modified":"2016-03-31T23:11:34","modified_gmt":"2016-04-01T03:11:34","slug":"rene-angelils-funeral-quebec-government-will-pay-just-shy-50000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2016\/03\/31\/rene-angelils-funeral-quebec-government-will-pay-just-shy-50000\/","title":{"rendered":"Rene Angelil’s funeral: Quebec government will pay just shy of $50,000"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"C\u00e9line<\/a>
C\u00e9line Dion and Ang\u00e9lil in 2012.
(Photo by Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

QUEBEC\u2014The Quebec government says it will contribute $49,770 to the reported cost of Rene Angelil’s funeral in Montreal last January.<\/p>\n

The province offered to play a role in organizing the funeral for Celine Dion’s longtime husband.<\/p>\n

According to documents obtained by Cogeco Nouvelles, the final tally came in at $700,000\u2014roughly 10 times the amount such events usually cost.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, the Quebec government said it would assume $49,770 of the total cost and will foot the bill for specific expenses such as photography, flowers and the registry of condolences.<\/p>\n

Productions Feeling, the production house owned by Dion and Angelil, refused to confirm or deny the bill. It also wouldn’t say whether it would challenge the government’s decision.<\/p>\n

No contract was signed between the two parties and neither side would say if a financing agreement had been reached in advance.<\/p>\n

The office of International Relations Minister Christine St-Pierre confirmed a \u201clist of costs\u201d relating to the funeral was sent to her office, which organizes such events.<\/p>\n

Spokesman Francois Caouette wouldn’t divulge the number, but said Productions Feeling provided a \u201clist of costs\u201d and not a \u201cbill.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier on Thursday, the government had fixed the maximum amount for the taxpayers at $75,000 before lowering the amount.<\/p>\n

In the past, the province has contributed to the cost of other funerals, including $60,000 for hockey great Jean Beliveau’s, $56,000 for that of fellow Canadiens legend Maurice Richard and $71,000 for that of Claude Ryan, a former politician and journalist.<\/p>\n

Angelil, Dion’s longtime manager, died Jan. 14 of throat cancer in Las Vegas at the age of 73.<\/p>\n

His funeral was held in Montreal on Jan. 22 in a meticulously planned event that drew more than 2,000 people to Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

QUEBEC\u2014The Quebec government says it will contribute $49,770 to the reported cost of Rene Angelil’s funeral in Montreal last January. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":73330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2832,4088,9989],"class_list":["post-73329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-funeral","tag-quebec","tag-rene-angelil","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}