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• Culture, condescension and Bill C-10 | Maclean's film critic Brian D. Johnson responds to Andrew Coyne

If you were watching the Genies the other night — and really, who would pass up that kind of excitement? — you would have seen several of the honorees seize the moment, with a television audience numbering in the high four figures, to make one of those political statements that people do at awards shows, elevating what would otherwise be another meaningless night of air-kissing and self-love to the realm of the truly embarrassing.

What was the cause du jour? Darfur? Tibet? The Brazilian rainforest? Guess again. That may be the sort of issue that gets them going at the Oscars. But here in Canada, there's really only one issue that matters to our artists: themselves, and their plight, making art in one of the richest countries on earth. And the specific offence that had them raising their tiny, bejewelled fists? Bill C-10, an Act to Amend the Income Tax Act. Or as it's known in the Canadian film industry, This is Exactly How Hitler Started.

The bill, which passed in the Commons last year and awaits third reading in the Senate, is the usual compendium of minor technical amendments, but includes amongst its 500-odd pages a provision restricting the generous tax credits on which the Canadian film and television industry depends to those productions where "public financial support . . . would not be contrary to public policy." In practical terms, as a scandalized Globe and Mail reported, the proposed changes "would allow the Heritage Minister to deny tax credits to projects deemed offensive . . . such as anything of an explicit sexual nature, that denigrates a group or is excessively violent without an educational value."

Or as actress Sandra Oh, just in from L.A. to do her bit for Canadian culture, put it on Genie night, "censorship has had a little work done and is trying to make a comeback." Producer Robert Lantos fumed/bragged that his blood-soaked melodrama Eastern Promises is "chock full of powerful, frank, honest, original scenes. Just the kind that, if some barbarians have their way, is no longer going to be permissible in Canadian cinema." Director David Cronenberg offered the thought that the measures seemed "like something they'd do in Beijing." Understand? Magazines in this country are being stalked by shadowy "human rights commissions," newspapers are being forced to reveal their sources to the police, but the real threat to freedom of speech is a change in the eligibility requirements for film and television tax credits.

Just so we're clear: absolutely no one would be forbidden by Bill C-10 from making any kind of movie they liked — violent, sexual, uneducational, whatever. They just might not be able to get public funding to do it. That's not censorship. It's judgment. The public has every right, through its representatives, to decide how its money is spent. If artists don't want to abide by the rules, no one's forcing them to take the cash. If free speech were really their thing, they'd go after laws that criminalize speech, including the obscenity and hate speech bans. But that kind of censorship they're okay with. It's only when their immortal right to reach into someone else's wallet is imperilled that they mount the barricades.

"We're not going to sit back and accept this," vowed Susan Swan, chair of the Writers' Union of Canada. "We don't like being told what kind of art we can make by the federal government." Excuse me? If you were looking for a definition of Canadian cultural policy, it would be "government telling artists what kind of art they can make," at least so long as the artists hope to be in line for government grants. An editorial in the Toronto Star wondered whether the movie Juno, which concerns a pregnant teenager, would be eligible for funding under the new guidelines. I've got news for the Star: Juno is ineligible for funding now. That's why it wasn't at the Genies: because Juno, directed by a Canadian, starring two Canadians, and shot in Vancouver, is not officially classified as a Canadian film. Whereas Eastern Promises, a movie about Russian gangsters in London starring two Germans, a Frenchman and an Australian, is. The committee that would vet films for objectionable content under C-10's provisions, the Canadian Audio-Visual Certification Office, is exactly the same crew of faceless bureaucrats that today vets them for their Canadianess. If your film counts as Canadian, you get funding. If it doesn't, you don't. Is that censorship?

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