No Tea For Lahey!

WELL, TYPICALLY, IF you want to see what Sarah Polley and Wendy Crewson had to say to the Senate yesterday, all you have to do is pick a paper. Any paper.

But when you read over the full transcript of yesterday's Senatapalooza meeting of the Banking Committee, you have to conclude that there was a bit of funny air in the air up there.

It's a collision of strange scenes and revelations -- the Senator who outed himself as an ACTRA member, a joking reference by the DGC's rep that he should get an Order of Canada for cutting his speech in half, the sniffing by the Conservative senators charged with defending this turd of a bill, pissy press releases saying Polley had no right "telling hardworking Canadians what to do" (particularly hilarious, considering the 60-80 hours a week most writers, directors, and crew people work to make a film or TV show -- talk about out of touch!)

And, of course, talk of those rascally Trailer Park Boys.

Here in Sticksville, of course, we're primarily concerned with writers and what writers had to say, so here's a couple of excerpts from the presentations by the Writers Guild of Canada.

Maureen Parker, Executive Director, Writers Guild of Canada:

We want to be clear about what we object to.

We agree that the government should not fund pornography or programs that promote hate crimes or other criminal activity.

If the government wants to revoke easily a tax credit in the instance where a film or video or TV production is in breach of the Criminal Code, then that is what the amendment to the Income Tax Act should say, and to that end, we support the producers’ amendment.

As non-statutory instruments, the proposed guidelines may be revised at any time without the involvement of Parliament. It is then open to special interest groups with different views to lobby for changes in the wording of those guidelines or their interpretation. That, in turn, will have an impact on all of the Canadian film and television programs funded by the tax credit. This is not acceptable for an objective, labour-based funding mechanism, such as the tax credit.

We find it very curious that this amendment only affects the domestic tax credit and will have no application to the production service tax credit. Heritage department officials stated to this committee last week that it was inappropriate to apply the test to the production service tax credit because it is “a credit to encourage work in Canada. It is not a credit related to content.”

We were surprised to hear that, as it was always our understanding that the domestic tax credit was also intended to encourage work, but on Canadian productions in Canada and it is also not related to content.

In structure, both tax credits are administered identically, so we see no basis for identifying one as a labour-based credit and the other as content-based.

This legislation would make it more difficult to fund indigenous productions but not American productions filmed in Canada with Canadian tax dollars. That simply makes no sense.

The Canadian tax credit is a labour-based credit. It is not subjective financing. To apply for it, a producer fills out an application form and sends it along with a bunch of documentation confirming the Canadian residency of key personnel and contracts and a budget to confirm labour expenditures. The expenditures are reviewed and the producer receives provisional approval of the plan.

If the producer spends the budget according to the plan submitted, she or he will receive the tax credit. Producers do not send in a script. The content is not reviewed. The proposed guidelines will change all of that.

Film and television production is very expensive. The average budget for a feature film is over $5 million, and the average budget for an episode of an one-hour drama is $1.4 million.

Producers need the tax credit to complete their financing after they have raised as much as they can from the marketplace, which includes government agencies, independent funds, broadcasters and distributors.

The federal tax credit, which is roughly 10 per cent of the budget, is an essential element. Producers take the certificate worth about 10 per cent to a bank. The bank generally advances 80 per cent of the value of the certificate to the producer. If there is the slightest risk that the certificate will be revoked, the banks will not consider it acceptable security.

To say the producers can find private money to fund productions deemed unacceptable is tantamount to saying they will not get them made. Rarely do private investors invest in film and television production, as the current tax laws to not encourage that form of investment as they once did in the late 1980s. Introducing this level of uncertainty about funding may not be censorship in fact, but it is definitely censorship in effect.

Rebecca Schechter, the President of the WGC -- and a writer who's written for Little Mosque on the Prairie, among other shows, put the production process in perspective for the Senators:

It is incredibly difficult to get a movie made in Canada. It can take years from the germ of the writer's original idea for the film to the start of production. There are many creative and business reasons for this length of time and difficulty, but let me assure you once you have written a script and a producer wants to produce it, a director wants to direct it and actors want to act in it, it is a Sisyphean task, pushing a rock up a hill many times. To add another layer to this difficult job by trying to guess before you even begin writing what the government of the day will consider excessive or gratuitous violence, or whether a bureaucrat who functions completely outside the creative process might deem the sexuality portrayed as educational enough to pass muster feels like the kiss of death. Television is developed differently from movies. Before even beginning to come up with an idea for a TV series, a smart writer will find out what kind of material the broadcasters are looking for. Do they want a cop show for a ten o'clock slot, a soap opera for an eight clock slot, comedies or dramedies? In television, you are beginning by shaping your own creative urges around the needs and demands of the broadcasters.


Then you shape your work around the demands of producers, directors, actors, art directors and editors, all the while trying to hold fiercely to the creative vision that got you started. Hanging another layer of guidelines on top of this is oppressive and totally unnecessary. Broadcasters already screen out what most people consider gratuitous, excessive violence and explicit sexuality.


These proposed guidelines open the door to special interest groups who will have the power to dictate what films and television programs you and I get to watch. I do not presume to tell anyone else what kind of programming should get made. Once it is made, if I do not like it, I do not watch it. I see no reason why the taste of any particular interest group should be more privileged than mine.


And okay, okay, yes...Sarah Polley is also a writer...so because she was apparently so threatening to the Conservatives that they went out of their way to attack her directly, I offer this lovely, clearheaded quote:

We will all see movies that we do not like; I see movies I do not like. I see things that offend me politically. I see things that offend me morally. However, I choose to debate them and to have a dialogue about them, or to turn away from them. I do not say they should not be allowed to exist and certainly would not choose to give that power to the minister to make that decision.

In the post presentation question period, Independent Senator Mira Spivak from Manitoba spoke to the wisdom of the mob, and the "not with my tax dollars" argument:

Senator Spivak: First of all, I want you to know that no bill can become law unless the Senate passes it. It does not matter if the House of Commons does not agree with us. It comes back here, and we hopefully will never agree. I have two things to say. First, in the world in which we live where we can see increasing attempts to silence opposition, thank God for Canada. We should never disturb the fragility that exists in this wonderful country for freedom of expression.
The second thing I have to say is, as a taxpayer, there is all this business about how taxpayers should not give money to something that, God forbid, offends them. What about the oil sands? What about tobacco companies? I do not agree with it, but we live in this country and we support it. Scratch the taxpayers' arguments and thank you for coming.

And finally, the most surreal moment in a most surreal proceeding goes to this question from Sentator George Baker (Lib, Newfoundland and Labrador):

Senator Baker: My first question relates to the evidence here this morning that the tax credit is not given to pornography, that the production of pornography is excluded from the tax credit. Therefore, given that this provision will now be directed at other productions, would not you agree this is an attack on the Trailer Park Boys -- an attack on Bubbles and Ricky, and that they really want Mr. Lahey to drink tea and his sidekick to put on a shirt?