When I posted my comments on Bill C-10 last week, I noted that Canadian Heritage Minister Josee Verner "says this will 'affect a very small number of the over 1000 productions that receive tax credits annually.' Can she name these productions?." The Toronto Star's Peter Howell has the answer – there are none. A Ministry spokesperson acknowledges that "Canadian Heritage has not received an application for a production containing criminal content."
Bill C-10 and the Non-Existent Problem
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We PAY govt for such incompetence!
Un-believable! Yet another Canadian Heritage debacle over absolutely nuthin\’… Gotta wonder if any of our MPs and the 000\’s employed across their fiefdoms ever actually DO anything productive? And if they all just went away tommorrow would any thing change? Would anyone even notice?
If Bill C-10 is expected to have no impact, why the fuss? The government has the right to decide how subsidies are distributed. If the proposed standard is not going to have much of an impact, I think critics of C-10 should just go do something else more productive than hysterically scream about government censorship.
Eric.
I would counter that, if that portion of C-10 is expected to have no impact, why include it? Currently there appears to be no particular impact. That does NOT mean, however, that conditions will remain the same.
Because
Eric, the problem is that the gov’t is spending time and money solving problems which do not exist, when plenty of real problems exist. This begs the question: why? If the gov’t appears to do something nonsensical, the response of the citizenry should never be to ignore it, the citizenry needs to understand why laws are being passed.
Generally in situations like this, there is a motive, often either an attempt to make a point via useless legislation, e.g. some sort of “won’t somebody please think of the children” knee-jerk type legislation, or to pass something which can be expanded/”scope creeped” to further an agenda.
Appears to have no impact….. appears.
Someone somewhere is eyeballing at least one production that it will affect. Probably some production that offended them and maybe only them. They thought ‘gee, my tax dollars paid for this, I don’t want to pay for this’. Why do I say this, because someone made the suggestion. I’d guess some one with some influence, otherwise the politicians wouldn’t bother.
You know I’m offended by the golden handshake that the MP’s get for pension. Can we outlaw that too?
WTF
BILL-C27
from the ministers mouth as he talks a new bill was passed into legislation that will strengthen IP laws to prevent video piracy
im watching C-SPAN in committee at 2AM EST
can someone verify that they indeed got some “short bill passed last week that does that”
so all this talk about fair copyright, and SAC proposal is
and has been slipped through.
Anyone tapping this minister for justice talk can you verify what he states that “canada will not become a haven for video piracy and last week we got a short bill passed through parliament that strengthens peoples IP rights”
Point taken. In my opinion, I think Bill C-10 is political posturing and pandering. On the other hand, the government is or should be allowed to determine how subsidies are given out. Also, I doubt that coming up with Bill-C10 required a significant amount of time and money. Again, it is a relatively cheap and easy way to score points with the conservative base. My point is that people should not get too worked up over a bill that proposes something I believe the government is entitled to do and does not have too much of an impact. I would rather focus more effort in prodding the government to reform the tax code and dismantling the government bureaucracy.
C-10
I don’t see how Minister Josee Verner’s response to the Toronto Star addresses the issue. The version of C-10 that I’ve seen says that funding can be denied for film projects deemed “contrary to public policy”. That creates a lot more room for discretion than would legislation withdrawing funding for films with “criminal content”.
The Minister’s misleading comments about the % of films potentially affected by this legislation have no relevance, really. What matters is the text of the law, and it cuts a wide swath. This meme of a non-existent problem is a red-herring, that opponents of c-10 would be wise to reject, rather than propagate.