Bill C10

I'm admittedly playing catch-up, not having kept up to speed on the Senate hearings on Bill C10 over at Parliament Hill. But I have been following Sarah Polley's thoughts on the matter because, well, she's fantastic. Well spoken, passionate and after distinguishing herself as the Oscar nominated writer/director of Away From Her, one of our finest filmmakers. And she's, what, all of twenty-eight years old?

Anyway, I digress.

Jennifer MacMillan had a nice piece in the Globe and Mail earlier this week, here's an excerpt:

Oscar-nominated actor/writer Sarah Polley arrived on Parliament Hill on Thursday to protest against a provision now before the Senate banking committee that could cut off tax benefits for film and TV productions that contain graphic sex, violence or other content that the government finds offensive.

'If there's something artists fear, it's censorship,” Ms. Polley said Thursday at a press conference.

'Part of the responsibility of being an artist is to create work that will inspire dialogue, suggest that people examine their long-held positions and, yes, occasionally offend in order to do so.'

And then there's the niggling little problem of American productions being granted a pass, which would effectively increase the divide between American and Canadian content and make it even harder to compete against corporate Hollywood.

Equally upsetting to Canada's cultural sector is the fact that the legislation, criticized as a "morality hammer," applies only to Canadian TV and film projects. Hollywood and other foreign productions that apply for tax credits get a free pass.

And for those of you out there who think spending tax dollars on films and television is a waste of money anyway, how about spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on months of Senate committee hearings when the end result seems like a foregone conclusion?

Check this out at Dead Things ON Sticks... unbelievable, indeed.

Think I'll go back to bed now.