Ideas came forward in the consultations, but none of them are practical or workable in the transition that is happening right now in streaming digital media—video games, television shows, movies, and so on. We haven't seen a proposal that we think is workable or practical in the new era.
As Minister Clement said, this is an unnecessary attack on consumers. I don't think it serves our cultural communities to make it more expensive for consumers to consume Canadian culture. As Minister of Heritage, I can tell you that we spend in our department hundreds of millions of dollars every year to help Canadians to create Canadian music, to support theatre, to support television, movies, books, and so on. I don't think it makes it more expensive. I don't think it serves anybody to make it more expensive for Canadians to buy a Kindle or to read a Canadian author. I don't think that serves Canadian authors or consumers. It doesn't serve anybody. So I don't think it works. And I don't see any workable proposals. Even the proposal that Charlie has put forward has massive loopholes in it that would impose a massive tax on a number of items. Anything that has a hard drive would be subject to this proposal. That includes automobiles and devices that aren't used for listening to music.
Automobiles have hard drives, Charlie. I don't know what wagon you go to and from home in. Automobiles have hard drives to which you rip music. By the way, that happened many years ago, and this would be subject to the tax. Your proposal, your legislation, says that anything with a hard drive would be subject to this massive new tax. This would include pretty much every electronic device out there—memory sticks, automobiles, cellphones, laptops, computers, desktops, and everything in between. You're using a scattered approach to address a focused problem. We think the focused problem is that creative communities are being gutted because we don't have a strong intellectual property regime. With Bill C-32, we're trying to stop the stealing.