I THINK YOUR SUGGESTION that the cultural industries should be funded entirely from the treasury, like the army, and eliminate all levies or similar measures creates worrying problems.
I don’t know where tax credits fit into this model. I do not believe that Canadians would revolt over a modest ISP tax that funded Cancon, especially if “revenue neutral” as the CRTC proposes.
Would Canadians be willing to pay more to have a country, or not, whether the funding is coming from general taxes or dedicated taxes or levies?
As you point out, that general tax funding would be expended on the basis of industrial value and not cultural value. Jobs, and not content, would be the objective, and the sales pitch to the public. Presumably, B.C. would be the model industry.
I foresee a number of problems.
First, French-language production is more a cultural objective of Quebec and official language minority communities than an industrial objective. If more jobs were created in Quebec, like in B.C., by making only English-language content, would that be OK? Not to the francophone viewers or the job-seekers or the provincial govt. or a federal govt. dependent on Quebec seats.
Second, if all production funding were subject to annual budgetary decisions, then some governments (like Saskatchewan?) might decide the cost of these tax expenditures was too great, and delete that line item. What would Doug Ford do?
Having multiple public funding sources, some of which are extremely difficult to delete, is a guarantee that one ideologue cannot delete the entire industry. Complexity is an advantage as well as a problem.
Third, aside from francophones, it matters to me if our broadcasters make any Canadian content or not. The higher the quality, the more viewers, and the more local (meaning Canadian in some form or other), the better. I see viewership driven by quality which, over time, is a factor of budget, not sets or stories that pretend to be located in L.A.
I don’t want to live my life as an imaginary American in an American fantasy world because the number of Canadian jobs in a de-cultured ersatz American industry might go up. Why live in a different country if you don’t want to be different?
Also, I think if we could not see ourselves on screen because the economics of media production eliminate Canadian content (which would happen in a completely free-market English-language private system), then sooner or later, there would not be much reason to keep Canada separate from the U.S. I have spent my life leaving the U.S., and don’t want the U.S. to come get me any more than it already has.
These are my personal opinions.
Kirwan Cox is formerly director of research and policy development, NFB; lecturer, Concordia U.; documentary producer; and is currently executive director, Quebec English-language Production Council.
