Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I wanted to bring up a matter that has been brought to my attention today, the newspaper article related to Bill C-10 that is currently before the Senate, I believe in third reading. I gather it is a budget implementation bill that contains a variety of matters, including changes to the Income Tax Act that would result from an announcement made on November 14, 2003--and I quote from Bill C-10--“to simplify and better target the tax incentives for certified Canadian films”.
The article in today's paper--and I would quote portions of it--is what causes some concern. This is The Globe and Mail on page 1, and I'm quoting from that article: “A spokesman for the Heritage Ministry last night confirmed the change.” That means the change that the--and I'll quote the title of the article--“Tories plan to withhold funding for 'offensive' productions”.
Then the article after that says--and I'm quoting it:
“Bill C-10, currently at third reading in the Senate, contains an amendment to the Income Tax Act which would allow the Minister of Canadian Heritage to deny eligibility to tax credits of productions determined to be contrary to public policy,” Charles Drouin, spokesman for Canadian Heritage said in a statement.
Continuing on:
Upon royal assent of C-10, the Department of Canadian Heritage plans to update the eligibility requirements for the [Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit] program. He said the department "has recently standardized and updated the list of illegal and other ineligible content."
Mr. Chairman, I've read the announcement and the background to the announcement of November 14, 2003, from the then Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, John Manley, and from the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Sheila Copps. It deals with technical matters of credits that can be claimed for these productions, percentages for raising the labour expenditures that can be claimed from 48% to 60%, and the nature of that labour expenditure.
So it's essentially a technical matter, and it doesn't deal, that I can tell, with any matters that some people would believe might be akin to censorship in terms of the nature of the productions or the content of the productions other than Canadian content and so forth.
I don't see that Bill C-10 does that. It doesn't give the government the capacity to do that. That's a matter, Mr. Chairman, that I think we need to clarify. I wanted to bring this up today to ask Mr. Abbott, as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, indeed what the intention is, if there's any intention of the government to introduce any regulations or to change any definitions that would indeed do what the article affirms. I think we need, as a committee, to address that. I, for one, would have significant problems regardless of who's in government if that were indeed the outcome of such amendments to the Income Tax Act.