Mr. Speaker, I rise today to oppose Bill C-31. In my judgment Bill C-31 simply perpetuates the myth that without massive government interference there would be no culture in Canada. That is something my party does not believe.
When we look at all the agencies that the Canadian government subsidizes, from CBC to the National Film Board, to Telefilm, to the Canada Council, it amounts to well over two billion in taxpayer dollars a year. This money is spent on those things bureaucrats in this country identify as culture.
I have to wonder what would happen if we removed this massive subsidization and allowed that $2 billion plus to stay in the hands of taxpayers and allow them to use that money to spend on the things they identified as culture.
Initially we would have a smaller cultural industry but it would be based on quality and not quantity. It would reward and recognize merit. When we walked into a bookstore and went to the Canadiana section we would be assured that whoever published any of the Canadian books had put their money into it feeling they were probably going to get money back out of it because it is a good book and not because they were being subsidized by the government to make sure it got on the shelves.
Consumers would like to know when they go into a bookstore that the books they are going to buy are there because they are good books and not because some government bureaucrat somewhere decreed this is a good way to spend taxpayers' money.
By subsidizing Canadian culture in all the different areas we send a message that our government does not feel our artists in all the different aspects of the art community can compete with artists from around the world. Why else would we be subsidizing them if the government is not sending that implicit message?
I have a great deal of concern about allowing bureaucrats to decide what pieces of culture are worthy of subsidization. In a free country and a free market generally speaking consumers are allowed to make those judgments and I think they make very good ones. They can decide what constitutes good art. They can decide what they want to purchase based on what interests them.
In Canada we let bureaucrats make those decisions many times. We let them hand out grants to all kinds of groups, like Buddies in Bad Times. This is a group that has been in the news recently. It is a homosexual theatre group and a very radically intolerant one. Recently when a Toronto Sun columnist, Christina Blizzard, questioned whether $377,000 in Canada Council grants should go toward this group, not only did this group get very upset and take her to the media board in the province of Ontario, to the newspaper board, not only did it abuse her in the media, it also produced a play called ``Dinner with Christina'' in which it advocated raping her.
That is complete garbage. To me it speaks volumes about the wisdom of some of the bureaucrats in this country who make those decisions. We do not have to stop there. There is a list as long as your arm of grants that go to groups like this.