Mr. Speaker, although I have had an interruption of several hours and time to reflect on the merits of the Senate amendments and the amended bill, it has not changed my mind.
Last night I was puzzling over the fact whether the heritage minister, in her grand design and maybe in her new capacity as playwright once she leaves the House in the capacity of heritage minister, has designed the production of a play that is either a farce or a tragedy. I have had time to reflect on that and it has to be in the category of a farce. Nothing else would really fit the badly and almost comical way the government has handled the issue of split-run magazines.
This is all about the government having picked a fight with the Americans on an issue that it absolutely lost. It picked a fight and expended a tremendous amount of energy in an area which it knew it could not win. The government thought it would have a lot of people rally behind it, even in its own cabinet, and that simply did not happen.
I suggest this was a badly flawed bill right from the very beginning. The chickens have come home to roost and now we have the amended version of Bill C-55.
There has been a loss of credibility by Canada as a result of the government's actions on the world stage. We have legitimate concerns. We have legitimate problems with the Americans in areas where we need to fight the good fight. Softwood lumber is one of those areas. The matter of whether we are dumping cattle into the United States is another one. Softwood lumber is a very big issue in British Columbia. There are many of them.
This is the same government, by the way, which assured Canadian forest companies that if they signed the softwood lumber agreement we would have five years of peace with the Americans. The government's assurances are basically a bit like a Hollywood movie set. There is a false front, the nice looking hotel, with nothing behind it. That is how the government handles it. It tries to pretend that it is protecting Canadian interests when all it gives is empty rhetoric. It goes on and on.
On the issue of culture the government told us that there was a tremendous exemption which would protect the Canadian cultural industry. The cultural industry is based on that so-called cultural protection, and what do we find? It was not there but it keeps it going.
Now the government is telling the cultural industry that it will take it to the World Trade Organization in the next round of negotiations and that it will give the industry a new cultural instrument, a new cultural agreement in the World Trade Organization. If the cultural industry accepts that premise and builds its policies based on that, it will be disappointed once again.
It is not the only industry that has been subject to the Liberal government's fancy footwork in terms of pretending that it will protect them. As I said softwood lumber is one example, but it goes beyond that.
At the World Trade Organization-GATT back in 1993 in the Uruguay round, the government told the supply management industry that it would protect it and that it would not allow other countries to do away with article 11, which essentially was border closures or no access into Canada of dairy, chicken and eggs. What did we get? We lost. We lost and we had to accept tariffs. We still have very high tariffs in those industries but they will be coming down too.
I suggest supply management cannot believe the government either. It is now telling supply management that we lost at the Uruguay round but, not to worry, at the new round of the World Trade Organization it will protect that industry. I believe that assurance is worth nothing. The government knows that cannot be done, so it is misleading the Canadian public and it is misleading those industries.
How do we regulate a cultural sector. We do not even have a good definition of culture. There is not agreement in Canada on what culture is. There certainly is not an agreement on the Liberal side. We know that there were different ideas by different ministers. How do we regulate that? I suggest it cannot be done.
This does not mean that culture does not deserve Canadians supporting that sector. A better approach, one that is more enlightened, might be to promote our culture in the international trade forum, just like we do with any other business sector. Let us promote culture at our embassies and consulates. It deserves it. We know that Canadian artists deserve that promotion as well. That is a forum that is possible. It is possible to do.
There is another way in which we might address the issue. There are problems with Canadian films getting distribution rights. I suggest that we might look at international competition law or even Canadian competition law. We could even go beyond that and into the United States where competition law might be applied and where there is too much concentration in the hands of one set of business people.
There are forums to be used, such as competition law, to break down that terrific monopoly so that it is possible for Canadians to distribute their own films in their own country. There are things we can do but we have to be realistic. Pretending we can protect them in the forums of this government and in Bill C-55 is simply not realistic.
There are problems that may make Bill C-55, as amended, not even possible to implement. What might they be? On the matter of how much advertising revenues will be permitted for American publications by Canadian advertising companies there is a formula set in place: 12%, 15% and 18% by the end of a three year period. Canadian advertising companies are set to challenge that content regulation because they are being restricted under the charter. That is a substantial issue in itself.
What about the agreement? If it is based on gross revenue, net revenue or after tax profit, who will police it? Will we have another set of culture cops travelling around trying to decide what the revenue base should be? That is exactly what will happen. I suggest there is not common understanding, even with the United States, in the letters that were exchanged.
Do foreign publishers investing in Canada in the other section need to publish magazines with a substantial Canadian content or a majority content? In the letters exchanged just last week we can see where the problem is already starting to percolate.
These letters say that the United States accepts the terms of the agreement which state that a net benefit review by Canada of new investments in the magazine industry will include undertakings from foreign investors which result in a substantial level of original editorial content. The United States is saying a substantial level.
What is Canada saying? Canada is saying that we will use guidelines which call for a majority of original editorial content.
I thought we had an agreement. What kind of an agreement do we have when we cannot even get right if investment in Canada by American companies will have substantial content or majority content? They are entirely different.
We are sowing the seeds for the failure of this agreement. I suggest the Liberal government knew that all along. It is just another Hollywood movie front, the false front it is hiding behind, pretending that it is protecting the cultural industries. That is one aspect of a future problem.
Another aspect is that the Liberal government, in its lack of wisdom, will go into a policy that subsidizes Canadian cultural magazine publications upfront. The Americans are asking, if that is the case, whether they should qualify for it.
We have signed international treaties. We signed the NAFTA agreement. We signed the World Trade Organization-GATT agreement which says that we need national treatment. It is in there. Does the government not realize what kinds of international agreements it has signed? If the government subsidizes Canadian publications it will have to subsidize American publications as well. How absurd.
The whole concept of subsidies is wrong. It is ironic that we will now subsidize American publications. Is this not the height of irony?
In addition, how long will these subsidies last? Canada is going to the World Trade Organization millennium round, kicking off in Seattle this year, to argue against subsidies. It will argue to phase out subsidies internationally. The trade department is doing that and I agree 100%. The Reform Party has suggested that subsidies distort the marketplace. There is no place for them and in fact they are damaging sectors like agriculture very badly.
While the Liberals are speaking from one side of their mouth at the World Trade Organization, they are designing policies to put the very opposite into effect in Canada. How long will those subsidies stand up? This agreement was not designed to stand up very long at all. It is to get them through a critical period. This is a full retreat. It is window dressing. It is trying to save some face in the face of a very badly designed agreement.
The heritage minister picked a fight with the Americans and she lost. The bill should never see the light of day. That is the position of the Reform Party. We will not be supporting it.