On 2008.03.04, Conservative member of Parliament Pierre Poilièvre was interviewed by Anna Maria Tremonti on The Current, CBC Radio One. The following transcript, provided for review and commentary, is based on the online RealAudio stream of that segment. (A previous guest, Atom Egoyan, is not transcribed.)
TREMONTI: Well, the government is looking at Bill C-10 through a different lens. Pierre Poilièvre is a Conservative MP and the parliamentary secretary to the president of the Treasury Board, and he’s in our Ottawa studio this morning. Hello.
POILIÈVRE: Hello.
— What do you think is wrong with the way the government funds film today?
— I’d like to start out by correcting a few misimpressions that were allowed to come out earlier on in the discussion. First, Atom Egoyan said this is a new measure. It’s not new at all. It’s not a big change from the past. In fact, these guidelines that will be, through the bill, applied to film already exist for federal financing of books and magazines. We’re going to take the same guidelines that are now used for those books and those magazines that seek federal funds and we’re going to apply that, those guidelines, to film.
— So it’s new in the sense that it hasn’t been applied to film.
— That’s the only thing that’s new. The bill – again, the intro said the bill was new. It’s not new, either. The bill was first introduced in 2003, five years ago, by then-minister Sheila Copps – not exactly someone I would consider a censorer of the hard right, as some have tried to portray the initiative. And the bill made it through the House of Commons without any objection from any of the political parties. So what we’re talking about here –
— I do recall, however, that this issue has come up before and the Canadian film industry has been against it.
— Well, they might well be against it, and, quite frankly, a democratically-elected people in the House of Commons will make the legislation of the country and will take into consideration what the members of the sector think. But here’s the reality. If they want to make porn, if they want to make gratuitous violence, or if they want to make material that is offensive to minority groups, for example, they can pay for it themselves. We live in a free country. And “free” doesn’t mean that you get things paid for. It means that you have the right to produce what you want, but if it doesn’t meet certain basic levels of objective decency, then it’s not going to be paid for by the Canadian taxpayer.
— Whose levels of decency? You have a federal Criminal Code that deals with pornography. What are you talking about?
— The same guidelines that are already applied to books and magazines. Again, we don’t see why it is that Canadian taxpayers should be forced to pay for porn films. But I’d like to –
— Well, in fact, Canadian taxpayers buy a lot of pornography. We should get that straight. It’s a big industry. But that’s not the issue.
— But they pay for it themselves.
— Are you saying that all Canadian filmmakers are making pornography? I mean, what are you saying here?
— Of course not. In fact, of the roughly thousand films that have got this tax credit, a very, very, very small number would ever be denied it because of the new rules contained in Bill C-10. Movies like Eastern Promises, Borderline, Ma fille, mon ange, those kinds of films would not have been touched. I don’t think that anything that was at the Genies last night would have seen any difference in its treatment if the bill had been in effect when those movies were produced. But, you know, we believe that – and all the movies that you see in the theatres, that you can order, you know, from your home –
— A lot of those movies, of course –
— Those movies will all, largely, with very minor exceptions, continue to receive the tax credit. All we’re saying is that the same thing that has been done for books and magazines for years in this country, that porno or extreme violence should not be paid for by the taxpayer.
— But again, who decides that? You say “the movies in Canadian theatres” – but a lot of those movies are of course American movies distributed by American-owned distributors. A lot of the Canadian films that are made we don’t get to see – not because they’re not popular, because they can’t squeeze into the theatres.
— Right. You say “Who decides?” Again, there is a board that is already in place within the Heritage department, and that board already decides which companies – sorry, which productions get the tax credit. That is an independent board. It is not a partisan operation. It has existed prior to the arrival in power of the Conservative government. And that group already makes the decisions of who gets the tax credit. If this bill passes, effectively the guidelines that exist for books and magazines will be added to their list of criteria. So an independent group of public servants, separate from the political arm of government, will make those decisions based on rules that already exist for books and magazines.
— So you’re basically concerned about pornography.
— And extreme gratuitous violence. And I think Canadians can distinguish between incidental violence or incidental nudity that forms a part of a broader plot in a movie and something that is produced exclusively for the purposes of pornographic gratification or gratuitous violence. And the latter description –
— But you’re saying they won’t get the chance to distinguish. You’re going to distinguish for them.
— Absolutely not. Canadian filmmakers will continue to have the right to produce anything they want and Canadian viewers will have the ability to watch anything they want within the existing Criminal Code. The only thing we’re saying is that if it’s nothing more than senseless pornography or gratuitous violence, then taxpayers are not going to pick up the tab.
— Mr. Poilièvre, thank you for talking with me today.
— Great to be with you.