There is a Globe piece this morning here, where Liberal senators say Finance Minister Jim Flaherty was wrong when he told reporters last week that a bill to deny tax credits to makers of violent or pornographic films and TV shows is necessarily a matter of confidence and must not be changed.
"A tax credit is not a taxing measure as such," Mr. Fox said. "It's not something that really affects the fiscal framework of the government." The Finance Minister sees things differently. "This bill should not be amended," Mr. Flaherty said after his appearance before the Senate committee last week. "A tax bill is a confidence bill. We all know that." But the senators are clearly signalling their interest in amending the provision.The article goes on about the line up of who has appeared and who is going to appear before the Senate. But the end of the article is all in the telling.
Others have been told there is no need to hurry their appearance, because the Senate study will take some time - perhaps until the next election.So where Steve would normally be jumping up and down about Senate reform, it looks like he would rather have Bill C 10 quietly die on the vine. I guess Steve doesn't want to go into an election carrying the Evangelical cross. I think he has too many crosses to bear as it is. The power of polling I assume.
Now if we can just get Dr. Williard Johnston of Canadian Physicians for Life to go on "The Hour", like McVety did below, we might be able to kill Bill C57 on the vine too.
PS: But hey I could be wrong maybe Steve might decide to become more open about his agenda.
3 comments:
First off, while not all fiscal matters are explicitly treated as confidence matters under the constitution, they do tend to be overwhelmingly regarded as such by Government and Opposition.
Beyond that, it's frankly ridiculous to suggest that every film produced in Canada deserves a tax credit. There needs to be some kind of public mechanism in place to decide which films should be credited, and which ones shouldn't. There should be industry representation within such a process as well, to ensure that each film is assessed fairly.
Frankly, to write the bill specifically to stop a Karla Homolka movie is more than a little ridiculous. The Bernardo/Homolka travesty did occur, there's no sense pretending it didn't.
There is a mechanism in place. It's called the criminal code, and the Canadian Censor Board. They do their work based on various metrics, which, while not perfect, are far more objective than any single person or random group of citizens without such guidelines.
You emphatically would NOT want industry representation within such a process, because a good number of the films that get the tax credit are made outside the industry. Do you really want to give them the power to kill potential competition?
The only fair way to do it is all, or none.
What's worse, C-10 doesn't even do it's own measure fairly, as it only includes Canadian produced films made in Canada, not films from foreign countries. In other words, the bill as it stands is simply a huge kick in the teeth to Canadian produced content, nothing more, nothing less.
Nonsense. A censor board decides what can be shown, not what can be funded.
"You emphatically would NOT want industry representation within such a process, because a good number of the films that get the tax credit are made outside the industry."
Nonsense. Independent film makers are still part of the industry.
I think it's actually rather simple. Have every film maker who has applied for -- and received -- a tax credit over the past 10 years, have them convene some sort of organization -- providing it doesn't already exist -- and have them choose the industry representative.
And, frankly, no. You don't fund "everything or nothing". You don't fund pornography (literal pornography), as actually has been done under the existing system.
You set standards for what does qualify for funding -- be it in the form of production grants or tax credits -- then you enforce them. Simple as that.
How do you set those standards? That's a little more prickly. I certainly don't want any one person deciding that, and certainly not Charles McVety. But standards do need to be put in place.
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