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We don’t want to
By Charles McVety April 18th, 2008 Opponents of subsidies for pornography face the same arguments given generations ago by defenders of government assistance for tobacco production.
If you opposed tobacco subsidies, you were against farmers, against agriculture, and probably against any government assistance to weak sectors of the economy.
If you opposed tobacco subsidies then, you must have been religiously motivated (read “irrational,” “unscientific,” “medieval”) at best.
You were a closet killjoy at worst. After all, for many Canadians smoking three packs a day was the main pleasure and recreation that they could enjoy, insisted the subsidy defenders. If tobacco subsidies were stopped, where would it all end?
The domino theory that an end to tobacco subsidies would mean an end to joy and happiness is now being borrowed by the defenders of subsidies that could be used to create pornography. If we end subsidies for porn today, we will end subsidies for culture tomorrow, and perhaps bring an end to joy and happiness the day after.
These critics will ultimately lose for the same reason that the defenders of tobacco subsidies ultimately lost. Society got tired of paying the costs of subsidizing a habit that risked harm to human health, family cohesion, and even family survivability if the breadwinner(s) were smokers. Society got tired of paying to cause a problem and then paying a second time in a sometimes vain attempt to fix it. Not all lung cancer was curable.
As in the case of tobacco, defenders of porn subsidies use a kind of attempted character assassination in saying that only the religiously minded are against it. One doesn’t have to be religious to recognize inanity. A COMPAS poll released this week shows that three-quarters of Canadians oppose subsidies for porn films. They can’t all be religious and they can’t all be Christian. In fairness, it is possible that a high proportion of Sikhs, Muslims, Jews and people of no faith oppose such subsidies.
According to the poll, in practice, opposition to such subsidies is especially strong among women, 30 per cent of whom would ban porn films outright.
The overwhelming majority of Canadians oppose the idea of subsidizing pornography because they intuitively understand the wastefulness of spending taxpayers’ money in this way instead of on health care, caring for the poor, or in other productive ways. They understand that pornography has become especially destructive of human, sexual, and family happiness in the Internet era.
The overwhelming majority of Canadians do not want to see the precious resources that support the arts and culture industry of Canada diverted to a handful of films that feature an abundance of gratuitous sex and/or violence, including a few that I would describe as pornographic.
Since the inception of the film and television subsidy program, the Tax Credit Guidelines have deemed pornographic films not to be an “eligible genre” of production. Once a film is given a certificate of approval for production, however, the government currently has no avenue to enforce this or any other regulation after the film is completed.
Canada’s auditor general, Sheila Fraser, cites this process as one of the least accountable expenditures of government funds and recommends changes. In her audit of 2005, Ms. Fraser stated that the government cannot even be assured that it is funding real expenses.
Like the vast majority of Canadians, I believe unequivocally in free speech and freedom of expression, not censorship. The apparently offending clause in Bill C-10 only creates the requirement of “the Minister of Canadian Heritage certifying that the production is a Canadian film or video production in respect of which the Minister is satisfied that ... (b) public financial support of the production would not be contrary to public policy.” No reasonable person would suggest that the government should fund films that do not meet the standards the producers undertook to receive a certificate of approval. This same clause has existed for years in four provinces and no one has ever called it censorship until now, and productions have increased.
An overwhelming majority of Canadians agree with the unanimous vote of the House of Commons that this clause is necessary to ensure that taxpayer funds do not go to pay for the production of pornographic films.
Almost every week I hear of the hardship of my friend’s family with their autistic daughter. Each day the mother has to put on a football helmet and shoulder pads to go in the room to care for her 18-year-old daughter. Their family budget has been decimated yet the government cannot find one dollar to assist them or help the many thousands of families dealing with autistic children.
Like any other beneficiary of taxpayer support, the film and television industry should be grateful for the $22 billion it has received for 12,000 productions over the past 12 years. Surely taxpayers can expect that producers should be willing to maintain the commitment they make when applying for a tax credit certificate.
Instead the free speech of 75 per cent of Canadians is oppressed as we are vilified, accusations of censorship are levelled, and yet no one can give a good reason to allow tax dollars to fund pornography, or to fund films focusing on sex with corpses, or others with memorable names such as Young People F---king and The Masturbators.
Read an article on the Compas Poll regarding tax subsidies for offensive material. File under Culture
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