Madam Speaker, I want to assure all members of the House that the NDP's lukewarm support of Bill C-55 still holds. It is possibly now stronger due to the bullying noises coming from Washington.
We still believe the bill is too weak because it does not contain provisions to improve the situation for Canadian magazines. We still believe the main premise of the bill is false, that the cultural protections offered under NAFTA or by the WTO are inadequate.
The WTO does not protect culture and the FTA and NAFTA continue to remain untested with fatally flawed exemptions for culture. We know that half a loaf is better at this time than no loaf and therefore we support the bill.
A lot seems to have happened on the volume front concerning Bill C-55 since the heritage committee heard witnesses on the bill. The Reform Party has decried this bill, saying we have no need to protect culture, that we should simply promote it.
We are debating today the 21 amendments proposed by the Reform Party, amendments that tersely delete ever section of the bill until nothing is left. The amendments to methodically delete every trace of the bill seems to reflect its approach to Canadian culture, methodically and clinically delete, delete, delete.
The irony of this position is that Reform then puts forward budget plans which would inevitably decimate the Department of Canadian Heritage, the only mechanism in place to promote our culture. The Reform Party position smacks of hypocrisy and of an opportunism that I believe comes painfully close to being anti-Canadian.
The Americans have turned up the volume by threatening, albeit verbally, to countervail steel, plastics, lumber, textiles and God knows whatever else if we pass this law. This kind of bullying is not unique. The committee heard similar threats coming from the New York based president of Time magazine at the hearings. He suggested that we were preparing to confiscate his property without compensation and compared the Canadian government to some old-style communist regime. I must admit that this is the first time I have ever heard this particular criticism levelled at this government.
What the Reform Party and the Americans believe is that this is not about culture but that it is about money. They think that magazines, and music, and books, and videos, and films, and paintings, and fragile artifacts are not to be valued as culture, they are goods to be priced for sale. They do not believe that writers are creators, but are potential profit centres only if marketed properly.
I can categorically say that Canadian culture is not a commodity. Margaret Atwood is not a soap pad. The Group of Seven is not an international trading cartel. The Canadian book publishing industry, a group of visionary business people who have made our great writers a possibility, should not be allowed to be shipped south as if it were a roll of newsprint.
The fact that only 2% of Canadian film screens show Canadian films is not a reflection of the quality of our films, because they are excellent. Instead it is the reflection of the fact that Hollywood spends more money promoting a single film than most Canadian filmmakers will ever have to produce their films in their lifetimes.
Sadly, this government and the official opposition continue to bow at the altar of Jack Valenti and his Hollywood version of reality.
Our culture is constantly under attack from south of the border. We as parliamentarians have a duty to stand in our places and say that we are different.
We need a government which will stand up for our creators, not reluctantly pick and choose cultural winners and losers.
I can see the talk around the current cabinet table: “This time we will hold the line on magazines but we will let books go. This time we will have the CRTC promote Canadian content through the CBC but we will kill the mother corp with underfunding. We will promote access to Canadian national museums, but we will abandon the regional and local museums. We will talk tough on trade but do nothing to fix the problems which exist in our current trade agreements. In other words, we will play both sides of every cultural issue”.
This may be the Liberal way of politics, but our cultural legacy deserves the full support of the Canadian government, not half a loaf.
Culture is something which Canadians have a right of access to, not simply because some American conglomerate has decided that it may be marketable, but because it has intrinsic value.
We should promote, but we also have a responsibility to protect.
I call upon this government not only to draw the line at magazines, but also to get active protecting our culture across the board. Do not continue to stand idly by while our book publishers are sent offshore with the obligatory nod from the Minister of Industry. Do not further gut the CBC and the NFB to shuffle funds to Canadian film producers. Take action on allowing Canadians to see their own product by bringing Canadian content to our screens. Do not listen to voices who believe there is a price for culture but ignore the value of culture.
Do not believe that the Minister of Canadian Heritage is the great protector of culture until the title is earned. I would say that the jury is still out on this minister's legacy.
Again, Bill C-55 is something that we will support in the House, but we continue to hold our praise for the minister and her efforts on Canadian culture.