44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 13, 2022 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, I encourage the member to join us at the heritage committee so she could hear from different members of the creative industry and from different representatives, such as IATSE, who have strongly talked about changing the rules so that more Canadian production can occur here in canada.
We mentioned The Handmaid's Tale, but let us talk about The Umbrella Academy with the great Colm Feore from Stratford, Ontario, which was filmed in Ontario, but is not considered Canadian content for the purposes of CanCon regulation.
This is the type of thing we need to see changed. We want to see more and more production in Canada. Whether it is in Vancouver or the greater Toronto area, we want to see that talent come here to Canada, using Canadian voices, Canadian actors, Canadian writers, Canadian producers and Canadian media consultants. We want to see that here in Canada, yet the definitions included in the current way of defining Canadian content mean that none of these would be considered Canadian, and that has to change.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to engage with the member. I work with him on the public accounts committee. I enjoyed his speech, particularly when he said that cultural producers should enjoy the space and security to tell Canadian stories. His focus was on indigenous stories.
I wonder what he thinks of a point of view that we often hear from the opposition side, including today. I think it is our friends in the Conservative Party who put forward that we should leave cultural production to the free market, saying that legislation and government have no place in assisting cultural production. What would the member's view on that be?
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague, who I work with on the public accounts committee. We do a lot of good work there, and I am really happy to take this question.
When it comes to making sure there is space and security for producers, it is important to know that the economy is a very different tool, and the free market in particular is very different in how it protects or creates space for what is important to it. Oftentimes, it resolves into big corporations, such as Netflix and giant multimedia firms, which suck up what they know by way of a profitable consumable, but that is in no way the same as making sure that Canadian content and the things we need to ensure Canadians have access to, such as language and cultural revitalization, are in fact imbued in that media, so they are very different. The private market has a very different outcome than what would result from the requirement to protect Canadian and indigenous content.
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Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives recognize that there is some good in this legislation. We would be happy to support that if the bill did not have these other problems, which are well known and the Liberals knew about. They had an opportunity to repair them properly, but they have not done that. They did half the job, not the whole job.
I have a burgeoning movie industry in my riding. People, particularly smaller producers, are saying they want to see the playing field levelled. They are dealing with big American producers, and they want to be in a better position to negotiate. I recognize that.
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Mr. Speaker, we have digital creators who are online right now who are producing very successfully. We have heard from many of them at the committee. We have heard many of them talking about this. They are very successful in this space. This is without any kind of change to what people can search and view online. To go back to that, we already have a lot of Canadian experts, content producers and many witnesses who have said that they are extremely concerned with this regulation and that it could, potentially diminish their views for what people are seeing right now.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague. I have been in his riding many times. I have family in the area.
This will help local artists and producers. We only have to look at some of the shows that have come out of Newfoundland. Consider the Republic of Doyle, for example, and what it did for our province to highlight and drive the tourism industry literally crazy because of the scenery it showed and the houses and colours of St. John's and beyond.
Our own artists need all the help they can get, especially with trying to come out of COVID. The member is an artist himself, and he fully understands how hard it is to make it in the industry. Why should people not be compensated for someone benefiting from their talent? They should be compensated, they should be supported and that is exactly what our government would like to do.
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