timeimmortal

brookelyn writes in with some further commentary on Bill C-10, following up on another article I had written about same.

I’m going to break this one up and respond to it in parts.

First of all thank you for posting a link to the actually bill, it’s been hard to find.

Just for the record: from the default parlimentary website for the Government of Canada, the text of Bill C-10 can be found in four clicks (Bills > Government Bills > C-10 > As passed by the House of Commons).

The current government requirements for the tax credits are more than sufficient they are very detailed, very specific and focus on work being created in Canada by Canadians.

And to think that people consider it jingoistic when Americans express with pride, on various products, that said products were made in America, by Americans.

The idea being that if a Canadian creates the content, it is intrinsically Canadian.

See, this is where I would actually dispute that idea. Someone like Jim Carrey is Canadian by birth, but he lives and works in the U.S. Anything he “creates” — a comedy routine, a movie, etc. — is not intrinsically Canadian even though a Canadian was involved, in whole or in part, with the production of the content in question. The sentiment that since a Canadian created something, that something is intrinsically Canadian seems, at best, rather misguided, and at worst rather dishonest.

The problem with allowing the government to monitor content is that now a small group of people is determining what is Canadian.

Except that we’ve already established that the government already has stipulations and guidelines regarding the granting of funding to Canadian media productions, which presumably require that the government take a role in monitoring the content of those productions to ensure that they are “intrinsically Canadian,” and therefore worthy of receiving funding.

In other words, the extant system already appoints a “small group of people” to determine “what is Canadian.” So why present a methodological objection to a bill that won’t significantly change the methodology employed in the government’s process of deciding which productions do or do not receive funding? The primary changes effected by this law will be to decision-making criteria, not to the method by which the decision is reached.

For example if a person is really offend by the word Fucking or the idea of teenagers fucking — it’s called “Young People Fucking” by the way — and wants to cut funding to a film because of it. Martin Gero the director of that sweat, funny, refreshing truthful romantic comedy, is brilliant and his artistic voice is exactly what I want my tax dollars to pay for. And it is exactly the type of project that needs a tax break to get made.

Why? Couldn’t he secure enough independent funding to complete the project? Was he unable, as many other directors have had to do, to fund the project himself? Could he have perhaps sought international investments of some kind? This film may be everything you say, and may even be a great film, although one wouldn’t know from the title (as an analog, would we assume that a book with a title like “The Divine Taste of Baked Feces” contains some of the most amazingly flavourful recipes known to humankind?).

But there’s another question. As has been established, existing guidelines attempt to ensure that funding goes to “intrinsically Canadian” productions. What is “intrinsically Canadian” about Young People F**king (I know what the movie is actually called — smarter than a box of hammers, here! — but I am trying to curb my cussin’ for Lent)? Do all Canadian teens f**k? Do all young Canadian teens f**k? Should they be f**king, if in fact some are currently not f**king? Is sex between young teenagers an “intrinsically Canadian” concept and/or practice?

Some people may feel that a production of this sort is exactly what they want their tax dollars to go toward funding. Others, myself included, would rather our hard-earned dollars not be funnelled into such productions. Whose preference, then, is the more valid? Should Canadians get a direct choice as to which productions their dollars go toward funding, and which productions their dollars should be denied to? Methinks such a system would be a little too clunky (and would doubtless result in Martin Gero, among others of questionable taste, losing quite a lot of access to dollars as a result). So…should the people be able to rely on their government to better appropriate the use of government funds, almost all of which come from taxes in the first place, by being more cautious in its investments and more exacting as to the qualifying criteria for receiving funding?

Or should the proles just shut up and accept what the Martin Geros have to offer them?

The point is it’s all of our money, it’s all of our culture, and the decision to view a film should be made by all of us at the box office.

Were a film privately funded, I would be the first person to agree — let the box office decide, and let the private entities who invested in the film reap the rewards of having made something people like and support, or reap the losses of having made something people feel isn’t worth supporting.

But with the issue of government funding of films, the rules change a bit. Whether or not I, as a Canadian taxpayer, go and see Young People F**king at the theatre, I’ve already contributed to it financially by the simple act of paying taxes. So the notion of voting for (or against) a production with my wallet is meaningless — money that I worked to earn has already landed in the hands of the production’s producers.

The fact of the matter is, it is not “all of our money” — it is either our money (as individuals), or it is the government’s money. Either way, other people apart from us and the government are not entitled to receive so much as a red cent; the only money we’re ever entitled to receive is the money we work for, after making an agreement with our employer that for a specific quantity and kind of work, we will receive a set financial compensation. Tax revenues are not the collective property of all Canadians, any more than my bank account is the collective property of all Canadians.

Because of the fact that my bank account is my own, and its contents mine alone, I exercise discernment and discretion about which causes I choose to support, and which I do not choose to support. No cause can — or should — expect that I will support them, and no cause should dare assume that it is entitled to my support of it. That decision rests with me, and me alone.

What is so wrong about the government reasserting that government funds are not the automatic entitlement of every two-bit Canadian hack director who has a video camera and a couple of no-name actors willing to doff their clothes? If government funding of film and television productions should go to those productions that reflect Canadian values and are “intrinsically Canadian,” then shouldn’t the Canadian government have every right — as the elected representatives of the people of Canada — to tighten the criteria it uses to reward those funds to those productions, the same as any citizen of Canada is fully entitled to do?

It’s not Censorship to say that the government will not fund certain categories of production, because the government is not actively forbidding people from producing content within those categories — it is simply saying that it will not, in and of itself, fund those productions (they will have to secure private funding instead of public). At no point would actually making something like Young People F**king become illegal (which would be true censorship). If those productions which do not qualify for public funding cannot secure private funding either (that is, if a Canadian production cannot secure adequate private funding within Canada), perhaps the producers of those affected productions should sit down and reflect on whether the majority of Canadians would really, honestly look upon their work as something “intrinsically Canadian” and/or representative of Canadian values.

I have to say, I think today might have set some kind of record for the number of Reader Mails I have received and answered. Not that I’m really complaining, mind.

At any rate, Erf writes in some follow-up thoughts to my response to a few questions he had about the Facebook group opposed to Bill C-10, and my dismissal of said group’s members as “whiny little liberals.”

Interesting. A couple of thoughts.

There’s a big difference between not getting around to answering your question about HRCs and actually liking HRCs. You may be right, but I wouldn’t take that as evidence. I do hope they respond, though! That sort of hypocrisy wouldn’t surprise me, sadly.

This is obviously subjective, but their charter doesn’t sound particularly whiny to me. Erroneous in places, yes — burying the text of a bill like this in a long and complicated piece of legislation (probably tied to some unrelated stuff) is unfortunately standard democratic procedure. But I don’t see the whining.

As for “imposing a conservative cultural agenda”, whether you’re a conservative or not the praise the bill is getting from a lot of conservatives does sound like that’s what’s going on. Whether this is bad or not depends on whether you’re a conservative, I suppose.

As for whether this bill will have negative effects, my answer is a resounding yes. My understanding of the bill is that the government doesn’t have to say whether they’ll fund a work until after the work is completed. Now, I’m not arguing that the government shouldn’t use discretion (sp?) about which works to fund. However, there should be clear, well-defined guidelines as to what gets funded and what doesn’t, and it should be possible to find out in advance whether a given work will qualify for funding or not. If filmmakers can’t know whether they’re going to get funds for something until after they’ve spent all the money producing it, they’re going to be extremely cautious as to what they try to do — and their other financial backers even more so.

In other words, this bill has the same kind of chilling effect that the HRC abuse has: people being very careful what they create, for fear the government will punish them for creating it.

Actually, this bill is rather different than what the HRCs do, because the government is not “punishing” anyone or exacting from any one person or group a financial penalty that is then awarded to another person.

I think the first error that is being made in how many people look at this bill and its implications is that there is an underlying assumption that Canadian productions are entitled to government handouts, which isn’t — or shouldn’t be — the case. No producer, no director, and no screenwriter is entitled, by virtue of being involved in the Canadian film and television industry, to access public funds to continue a project past a certain point in its development. And I, for one, think that the government should have every right to decide whether it wants to fund certain productions or not. That’s not the same as Censorship, any more than I am personally engaging in censorship when I…say…refuse to donate to charities that funnel some of their collected dollars into the abortion lobby. It’s simply saying that in the view of the government of Canada, which ostensibly represents the will of the people of Canada, certain productions aren’t of sufficient merit to spend public funds on.

Is it necessarily censorship when a university decides not to fund a new branch of research because, in the view of the university administration, the merits of the theory to be tested and the evidence collected for it thus far are insufficient? If not, then why is it censorship when the government proposes to act in a similar manner?

Obviously, there should be an established set of criteria that detail how one can and cannot qualify for public funding as a film producer or director. I would completely agree that if the government is going to be more restrictive in terms of how it doles out public funds, it should make clear the criteria it uses when considering whether to open its coffers. At the same time, there’s no point for the government to draft such guidelines at this point in time, when the bill that would make them necessary hasn’t even been made into law yet. If Bill C-10 passes, I imagine we will see exactly the sort of criteria that Erf is asking for drafted and put in place. But until and unless C-10 passes into law, there’s no need for the government to waste time drafting the criteria in question. So, they haven’t.

Now, admittedly, the bill does stipulate that the government doesn’t have to commit to funding a work until after it is completed. But then, as the leader of the Facebook group makes clear, most productions don’t apply for funding until the later stages of development anyhow. So I don’t get the sense that this bill will really put any kind of meaningful chill onto film and television production in Canada. I imagine that the criteria that the government will put forth will be fairly broad (’s government is not particularly socially conservative), so most producers won’t be adversely affected at all. Yes, there is a risk that some “art house” (read: soft-core porn films re-labeled as “avant garde”) productions may lose their funding…but by the same token, that will just mean that those productions will have to rely more on private investment, which I don’t think will dry up in the wake of this bill passing into law — if anything, the bill will increase the amount Canadian productions rely on private funds for their production, which I think is a good thing.

One would think that Canadian liberals and progressives, especially, would be happy to be free of government funding, because they’re all about “freedom” in what they produce, and decry any kind of “censorship” — even the “censorship” of negative press, at times. But the nature of government is to regulate that which it spends money on (be it healthcare, education, or film production), so one would think that the average filmmaker would be happy to be rid of government funding, and thus freed from government oversight. And yet, the exact opposite seems to be the case, and I admit I can’t quite wrap my head around this. But there it is: people demand that the government continue to fund Canadian film and television, without asking too many questions about the content being produced. We wouldn’t dream of telling a private citizen to fork over money without asking questions about what it will be used for (again, abortion is the one exception to this)…but apparently it is a sign of the coming chill winds of censorship when we start to say that governments are similarly entitled to be picky about what they fund and do not fund.

As for whether this bill reflects a right-wing social agenda…well, in a sense that’s not even the question. Did this bill emerge from a party that is, at least nominally, conservative? Yes, it did. But is the bill itself necessarily conservative in its stipulations and outlook? It doesn’t seem to be, no — if anything, a lot of it seems like common sense. And that shouldn’t be the exclusive domain of the Right (although at times it seems to be). Yes, it enjoys a lot of support from conservative elements in society, but the bill itself is not overly biased in one political direction or the other. To me, at least, it seems to be a bit of common sense thinking about the state of government funding of Canadian film and television production (which, we must admit, has churned out some pretty tasteless and questionable material over the years).

Update: Welcome, Steynians!