If Canada’s federal Tories and its social conservatives expected Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s threat to call a general election on the issue of the Income Tax Amendment Bill/Bill C-10 would silence its multiplying critics over the increasingly contentious federal tax credit withdrawal to media projects considered ‘against’ public policy, such hope was again proven forelorn this week.

At the same time, a political opinion poll noted that there was once more a sharp reduction in Harper Tory leadership, and the Liberal Opposition only trails them by three points. It is by no means certain that the Harper Tories could win any federal election centred on this social conservative obsession.

Noted Canadian independent film producer has been a strong critic of the proposed legislation, and referred to Ontario’s Film Board of Review under Mary Brown, a notorious Canadian social conservative of the seventies. Brown and her lackeys mutilated Cronenberg’s SF/horror movie The Brood (1979) through chopping out a scene where a woman chewed on, and licked, an external uterus growing on her hip.  He expressed fears that once again, Canadian censorship policy would be directed by the subjective fears, prejudices and opinions of public officials and bureaucrats.

He expressed very real fears that the clumsy attempt at stealth censorship in question would lead to an exodus of creative media talent from Canada, particularly its currently thriving independent production sector.

Cronenberg’s fare isn’t for the faint-hearted. He is best known to more recent filmgoers as the creative force behind the filming of British SF author J.G.Ballard’s Crash (1996), which depicts people getting erotically charged through car accidents, as well as Eastern Promise (2007), a recent espionage movie featuring a memorably naked Viggo Mortensen in a steamy sauna wrestling scene with an assailant.

He repeated concerns that the ill-considered proposed policy would seriously destabilise Canada’s film and television industries through providing public sector funding continuity, given that private sector investors may pull out of a high-risk sector without that stabilising source of funds. The Canadian Film and Television Association added their concerns to his.

Only bona fide child porn and hate propaganda should be denied film tax credit funding, he added.

Recommended:

Daniel Leblanc: “Bill C-10: Proposed Tax Law a Step Backward, Cronenberg Says” Globe and Mail: 15.05.08: http://www.globeandmail.com