IT WAS SUPPOSED to be simple. Just like Sarah Polley, just like the other pros, Director David Cronenberg was going to go before the Senate Finance Committee yesterday and say what he knew about Bill C10, and why it was bad policy.
Instead, it turned into farce.
Senator Goldstein: I have a point of order to raise. It takes precedence for the moment. I attempted to raise this question during Question Period in the chamber earlier this afternoon, but the Speaker ruled that it should be raised in committee. I am doing so now.
I understand that this morning the CBC broadcast news that the chair of this committee had so arranged the situation so that there would not be television coverage of our hearings this afternoon. Later this morning, we the Liberal members of the committee, forced the re-establishment of the coverage as soon as we discovered that it had been countermanded.
Colleagues, this witness, Mr. Cronenberg, will be addressing the issue of government censorship. What I just described is a further manifestation of censorship by this government, attempting to prevent the press and the people of Canada from hearing opinions and ideas which do not reflect the opinions of the government.
Now the government is attempting to censor a public hearing that deals with the attempts of the government to censor the arts in Canada. So much for transparency and honesty."
What followed was a pretty predictable and generally despicable back and forth. But the question remains open -- The Chair, David Angus, denied bitterly that he tried to pull the plug. He said that, in fact, he was the guy who tried to get the cameras in, once he found out there were no plans to televise David Cronenberg's presentation.
But another Senator came back and agreed the whole thing was fishy, since in a year and a half on the committee, this was the first meeting he'd ever heard of that wasn't planned to be televised...
Democracy - 1 , Conservative Playbook - 0
The partisan back and forth the rest of the day was equally predictable. Senator Tkachuk continued his weird attempts to justify the bill by saying that it had already been effect since 1995. He was corrected several times, and Cronenberg, trying to move the discussion along, patiently explained to him that whatever political point he was making was irrelevant. (As it has been every week, when he tried to raise it with Polley, the WGC, the DGC and everyone else. An industry with over 100 000 people is on the brink, the guy wants to parse "who's bad.")
Cronenberg wouldn't let him do it. He pointed out patiently that the outcry now, the situation now, the fact that NOW the Royal Bank is on record as saying it would reconsider gap financing films was the issue.
It is not a pretty thing, seeing laws made. It's terrible to see old people argue back and forth about something that has such a deep effect on your life, and demonstrate with every word from their lips just how deeply fucking out of touch they are.
It's enough to make your head explode.
Speaking of which, when he finally got to speak, Cronenberg was, of course, eloquent as hell. Excerpts of his testimony follow:
I went to Telefilm Canada 40 years ago, when it was the Canadian Film Development Corporation initiated by Judy Lamarche, I believe, to see about obtaining funds for an underground film I was making.
In the 40 years since then, there has never been a pornographic film made with government money. There has never been a criminal film made with government money. There has never been a hate film made with government money. Therefore, why is this happening now? I do not understand it.
The mechanisms that were always there in the Criminal Code and in the mandate of bodies like Telefilm are in place now as they were then. They work. They filter out all of those possibilities.
Those bodies are not allowed to fund projects that contravene the Criminal Code. Therefore, what is this really all about? I do not get it. I do not think we need it and I do not understand it.
Having said that, if it did not do anything negative or cause any problems, then you might say okay, let it go through. Let it become law. It will not change anything. Unfortunately, it has significant repercussions that perhaps the original framers of this clause were not aware of and that we are now all aware of. I am on the advisory committee of PEN Canada. PEN is an international organization that protects writers and journalists, et cetera. They are very upset and disturbed by the implications of this clause. It is not a bunch of hysterical, overly sensitive artists who are running around overreacting.
It is a real issue and it matters not only in terms of the theory of democracy and freedom of expression, but also in dollars and cents. Those of us who work in the film industry have to be tough. We have to have our feet on the ground because it is a business as well as an art form. A lot of money is involved in movie making. Youhave to balance your artistic aspirations with the realities of international finance, distribution, artistic awareness, et cetera.
The people who are being upset by this are telling you something that is real. It is not a hypothetical thing that does not matter. It is something quite substantial. I will assume these implications were not properly understood by the original framers of this clause. That is the way I prefer to think about it.
Having said how tough and down-to-earth artists are, I also like to think of us as the frogs of the ecosystem. Biologists are always looking at frogs because they breathe through their skin. They are the first to absorb any toxic elements that exist in the environment and they react by becoming quite deformed and die.
Artists are like that. That is our job. We have these antenna and we have this thin skin. Therefore, in certain circumstances, we are the first to become aware of dangerous toxic elements in the environment that other people may not be aware of as quickly.
I have read letters to editors saying these artists go to the government for handouts and now they are complaining that the handouts they should not get anyway will be cut off.
The film industry is a business. I have had the experience of being censored, first by the Ontario Censor Board. That was at a time when you could go to jail for five years for putting the pieces of your film that the censor board had cut back in your film and showing it. The projectionist could lose his licence and also be put in jail. One of the implications of this clause is that it is not easy to censor in a democracy. It is not easy at all. The mechanism of censorship is quite complex and difficult because, basically, you want to filter out the subjective. You want to filter out the idea that one person or three people in a closed room will look at your film and say, “I just don’t like it. So let’s suppress it.”
That is antidemocratic. It is not anything that I think anyone really wants.
However, it is what would result from this clause coming into law.
The issue is this: The government investment in most films is the foundation. All filmmaking in Canada is independent filmmaking. I do not mean student filmmaking; I mean independent filmmaking. By that I mean you do not have major Hollywood or Canadian studios that have their own source of financing. All Canadian films are independent films and government funding is the platform; it is the solid, security platform upon which all of those productions are built. I cannot think of one that was not built that way.
This clause would make that platform very earthquake prone. It would take away the solidity of it. That is why the bank has said that it could not accept that. They have loaned money to you based on the tax credit that they expect. Knowing that it could be pulled after the fact, why should they take that risk? As I said, there are no guidelines that can make that risk reasonable enough that a bank would take it. The film business is risky enough as it is. It is like a house of cards with the tax credit as the basis. You pull that out and the whole thing falls apart.
Therefore, this makes it very difficult for any producer. The whole structure that has been in place and has worked, as I said, for at least the 40 years that I have known and benefited from it will be destroyed. In essence, this clause negates the existence of Telefilm and the existence of the Canadian Television Fund. They might as well not exist. There will be nothing for them to invest in because everything will be seen as too risky.
A lot of money is involved. Once again, you have heard from producers of all kinds: Television and movie producers. This is not a hypothetical thing. This is much more real than the threat that I think is quite imaginary. The imaginary threat is that there will be the embarrassment of government funds somehow put into a film that is pornographic and contravenes the Criminal Code. That is a threat that has not existed for 40 years. However, the threat I am talking about is very real.
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