One wonders if the amount of material already written about Bill C-10 would surpass even the hefty 568 page tome itself. Of course, it isn’t the entire Bill that has created such an uproar among film and television industry professionals, as well as activists, media, and 52% of the public. It is a certain clause A-2 in section 120 that would ostensibly allow the Heritage Minister to withdraw tax-credits from film and television productions deemed “contrary to public policy”.
The Bill passed through the House of Commons late last year without much fanfare, but has since been land-locked in a Senate Standing committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce since December of 2007. The media began to pick up on the story in February, and during the Genie Awards many presenters such as Sandra Oh, Gordon Pinsent and Robert Lantos condemned the Bill after the Heritage Minister Josée Verner didn’t show up. Two of the industry stalwarts, director David Cronenberg and actor/director Sarah Polley have added their voices to the chorus of dissent, calling it an assault on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Polley, who has a long history of invoking the ire of the Conservative government, came under fire in a press release about her “vested personal and political interests”, citing her ardent NDP support and an incident at an anti-Mike Harris rally involving riot police that knocked out two of her teeth. Amongst all of this back-and-forth Steve Waddell, exective director of ACTRA has succinctly stated that, “The government is overstepping its bounds and interfering in an arm’s-length process… Withholding public funding for film and television productions it deems offensive is a dangerous direction for this government that smacks of censorship”.
Josée Verner responded to the allegations by saying that the policy “…ensures that the government has the ability, in exceptional circumstances, to exclude certain material from public support. There is material that is potentially illegal under the Criminal Code, such as indecent material, hate propaganda, and child pornography. Currently, no provision in the Income Tax Act or regulations exclude such material. Bill C-10 addresses this loophole, in particular.” Many Liberal senate members have vocally opposed the bill, including Wilfred Moore who has asked “Are we trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist?” Sarah Polley, in an interview with CBC stated that we already have these guidelines in place, “…it’s called the Criminal Code… Every work of art is subject to it when it is publicly funded… there are so many checks and balances already in place through Telefilm, the CTF, and the Criminal Code that I think it is redundant and sets a very dangerous precedent to have it that close to government policy.”
The most vehement supporters of the Bill, the Federal Conservative party, religious lobbyists like Charles McVety, and groups such as Canadians Concernced about Violence in Entertainment and REAL Women of Canada deny that it is in any way a restriction of free expression. Productions that do not fall under the purview of ‘public policy’, they say, are still allowed to continue, just without the support of tax-payer money. Furthermore tax-credits are not a subsidy; they are awarded only about 18 months after production, and simply enable external investors, or those involved in the production to save some of their own money. However this caveat is exactly what many are in uproar about, as the guidelines towards receiving tax-credits being so vague, writers and producers could only know whether they would receive anything after the production is long over. President of the Writers Guild of Canada, screenwriter Rebecca Schechter has stated that “the guidelines [will] force writers to self-censor…They will be trying to decide how much violence is appropriate and whether the sexuality shown will meet the criteria for educational purposes.” Furthermore, the ambiguous, after-the-fact nature of the Bill would make it impossible to ensure any repayment of bank loans. Even foreign investors take tax-credits into account before any financing. The Royal Bank of Canada has even gone on record to state that “Should the assumption of eligibility currently underlying all bank loans to this industry be compromised or diminished by Bill C-10, this will indeed limit the ability of the bank to continue funding Canadian content production.”
The tax-credit program was instituted in 1995 and has since then funded 12,000 productions for a tune of more than $22 billion. What is perhaps most astounding amongst this ideological food-fight is that this clause already existed. Verner pointed out to the Senate committee that the clause was not, in fact, new, but originally instated in a draft legislation in 2002 by the Liberal finance minister John Manley. She is partially right. While the tax-credit exemption in the Liberal Bill was based on the Criminal Code, the new exemption has a set of vague regulations that have yet to be legislated. All of which propels the controversy to a politically partisan stage, one in which the Liberals hold more intrinsic trust from the industries in question, while Harper’s current Conservative government is suspected of holding a ‘religious agenda’ behind its federal reforms. This isn’t hard to understand when characters like Charles McVety, who is happy that “somebody is finally listening”, has said that it was his tireless lobbying that prompted the conspicuous clause in the first place. He has also called to have films that ‘promote’ homosexual behavior to be classed as exempt under the guidelines. And with the recent $45 million in cuts to arts funding by Prime Minister Harper, axing programs like PromArts, Trade Routes, Capacity Building Programs and Stability Programs, the question of a subversive ideological agenda has become ever more omnipresent.
On the bright side – if there can be said to be such a thing – several Liberal senators have stated that they have made the proposed amendments to the Bill that would would hearken back to its original form, using the Criminal Code as the concrete set of guidelines that would govern “public policy”. Following the amendments the Senate can now send the Bill back to the House of Commons to be reconsidered. Now we just have to wait for them to come back from their summer vacations.
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Some Arts Programs that were cut:
PromArts: A travel grant for artists administered by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. Cost: $4.7 million.
Trade Routes: A grant that helps cultural groups export and sell products abroad, administered by the Department of Heritage. Cost: $9 million.
Canadian Memory Fund: Distributes money to Federal programs that digitize cultural heritage collections. Cost: $11.7 million
Culture.ca web portal: Web site charting the cultural happenings around Canada. Cost: $3.8 million.
Northern Distribution Program: Distributes the Aboriginal Peoples Network to 96 Northern communities. $2.1 million.
