Mr. Speaker, the government has once again caved in to American pressure. The government has once again tried to tell the Canadian people that a slap in the face is a pat on the back. The government is happy to sell out the interests of the Canadian cultural industry and happy to pretend, despite all evidence to the contrary, that this deal, this watered-down bill, is in the best interests of Canadians.
When the Minister of Canadian Heritage spoke yesterday in the House she asserted that the new requirements for Canadian content were in some way a victory for the Canadian magazine industry. Let us get some things straight.
Before these amendments were introduced, Canadian content was not even an issue. Split-run magazines were to be illegal, banned and prohibited. American companies were to be stopped from sending recycled American stories into our country and stopped from taking Canadian advertising dollars out of our economy, out of our industry and placing them in American bank accounts. For the minister to claim that these new requirements are a victory for Canadians simply beggars belief.
Perhaps, if I could be so bold as to suggest lines for the minister's speech writers, the government should shift its emphasis and tell the truth to the Canadian public. The truth is what we have with this new and neutered Bill C-55. It is a conditional surrender; not an unconditional surrender, but one where the Liberal government was allowed by its American masters to preserve a shred of its dignity in the hopes, no doubt, that this ever so pliable administration would be around for years to come to do the bidding of those in Washington.
This surrender will be the first step in a wholesale attack on the protection Canadians have erected to preserve their cultural industry. We can expect to see the American magazine industry pressure their government to launch a challenge to our laws under the provisions of the WTO and the NAFTA. This surrender, the loss of this first battle, has opened a hole in the Canadian defences which threatens the very heart of our culture.
By acknowledging the ability to negotiate Canadian content requirements for magazines, the Liberal government has laid down a carpet for the long line of American entertainment businesses which are all too eager to swamp our country with their cheap television shows, low quality radio broadcasting, American books and movies.
Now that they know we are willing to trade on our heritage, to trade on the minds of our writers, actors, painters and broadcasters, there will be no stopping them. I know that the government dismisses fears such as those that I have just expressed as being apocalyptic, anti-American and who knows what else, but I disagree.
I have no problems with the United States and I stand with all members in the House in admiring the many contributions our neighbour has made to human progress. However, that admiration is qualified, as all admiration should be if it is not to descend into fawning hero worship. That is what I fear has gripped the government: an awe at being so close to such a powerful country that it has rendered the Liberals unable to discern what is in Canada's best interests, an awe that has opened the doors of our country to ideas about American health care, American justice and American governance, thinking of the ever increasing power of the prime minister's office and making comparisons between it and the American president's white house.
Those are elements of America that I am happy to see remain on the south side of our border. The line between admiration and adulation is a thin one and I fear it may have been crossed. We are truly the mouse lying down with the elephant.
That is not a negative reflection on either party, for we in the New Democratic Party are firmly committed to the equality of all things. It is simply a reflection of the reality that America's cultural industries are the largest in the world and we, because of our close ties, are more susceptible than any other country to domination by them.
There is no reason for us to slam the doors and introduce protectionist measures that will exclude American magazines from the Canadian market. Our objection is that we should pay U.S. companies to take money out of our country. That is what Bill C-55 calls for.
At first that level may be 18%, but we can bet that in a couple of years it will increase and then increase again. Those magazines with their large budgets and market penetration will be able to attract Canadian advertisers through the simple exercise of the law of supply and demand.
We cannot blame those companies for choosing to advertise in split-run publications. They are simply making the best use of their advertising dollars. However, we can blame the government which allows those magazines to exist for choosing to cave in to American threats instead of defending Canadian businesses that will lose out because their government refused to defend them.
All too many times we have heard members opposite insult my party for our stand on business. The New Democratic Party is proud to defend Canadian businesses, to defend this whole industry, while the government is happy to serve as the B movie cast of this Hollywood controlled production.
What we are debating should not be reduced, as some have tried to do, to an argument over culture. Another battle in the war I referred to earlier is for the right of Canada to determine its own economic and cultural policies. If the bill becomes law, those whose interests may be threatened will examine every bill passed by the House. They will see that laws can be changed to suit their needs and that as long as the compliant majority government sits in the benches opposite, no law, no bill, no act or motion need pass without their veto.
In the years since the transformation of the GATT into the WTO and the FTA into NAFTA we have seen numerous violations of those agreements by the Americans. Whether it be softwood lumber, salmon and now magazines, there is a consistency to those disputes that bears mentioning. Every one was won by the Americans. Some they lost on paper, as international tribunals and other august bodies passed judgment in our favour, but when it came down to it the logic of the mouse and the elephant came into play.
The elephant knows that it can win every time. It only needs to move a bit to make us do what it wants. The elephant really has moved with the bill. The Americans have pushed the government into doing exactly what it promised would never happen by allowing new split-run magazines to be introduced with watered down requirements for Canadian content and a built-in flexibility that is bound to see the percentage of allowable Canadian advertising in split runs increase year after year after year.
The Minister of Canadian Heritage promised that whatever changes were made the spirit of the legislation would remain unchanged. She was either misled or misleading.
The original Bill C-55 presented to the House contained solid planks upon which to build a defence of the Canadian magazine industry. One by one those planks were removed under American pressure until eventually nothing was left.
The minister asked for credit because the trade dispute with the United States was avoided. How much credit should we give someone whose actions will damage Canadians in much the same way as a trade war while denying us the right to retaliate in kind?
I was elected to protect jobs in my riding. One of the few sectors of the Cape Breton economy that is booming is our cultural sector. It makes me angry when I look through the provisions and implications of the legislation and realize that government funding for local magazines, concerts, festivals and recordings could be threatened. The government may be so enamoured of American culture that it is happy to watch it engulf our own.
I believe that there is much worth fighting for in this country, not the least of which is our culture.
Once again Canadian advertisers are not at fault. They are simply trying to get by, but the failure of the government to resist the bill means that in due course there will be no Canadian magazines left to protect.
The minister's discourses on percentages and phase-in periods will amount to nothing more than sound bites to be excerpted in the latest edition of Time , the Canadian edition with George Bush Jr. on the cover, with stories about storms in Kansas and fires in California and advertisers from The Bay, Canadian Tire and CIBC on the inside. O Canada.
