Creative Canada ‘cultural policy, not tax policy’: Joly

OTTAWA — Opposition MPs continued their criticism of Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly’s cultural strategy during Joly’s appearance at the House standing committee on Canadian Heritage late Thursday afternoon, including questioning the minister about imposing sales tax on foreign digital platforms and CanCon contributions on internet service providers (ISPs). Joly said that the government never had any discussion with Netflix Inc. regarding taxes, or potential legislation that would cover digital platforms, ahead of the Sept. 28 release of Creative Canada. “What I outlined was a cultural policy, not a tax policy,” Joly said in response to questions from NDP heritage critic Pierre Nantel. Nantel also asked about a report issued by the heritage committee that recommended the expansion of the five per cent contribution that TV providers pay into Canadian programming to ISPs. “This committee spent 18 months reviewing these recommendations and one of them was to ask internet providers to contribute, and when you tabled your report, the prime minister rejected this and you did the same thing,” Nantel said, according to simultaneous translation. “Are you saying the NDP is in favour of increasing taxes for internet providers?” Joly responded. Critics of Joly’s strategy haven’t let up in the month since the policy was released. It’s been brought up in question period, most often by the NDP, most days since Sept. 28. Recent criticism has centered around lobbying efforts of U.S. digital giants, with opposition MPs accusing the government of being influenced by those meetings. The QP questions followed news stories that outlined the number of times Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Amazon.com Inc. and Netflix met with the government prior to the release of the strategy. Conservative MP Alupa Clarke brought up the issue during Joly’s appearance, asking her about meetings with Google. “We have to meet with these digital platforms because they’re part and parcel of Canadians’ lives,” Joly responded. “We’re talking about Canadian content on these platforms.” She also said she met with Canadian cultural groups, such as the Association québécoise de l’industrie du disque, du spectacle et de la vidéo (ADISQ), but those meetings wouldn’t be reflected in the lobbyist registry. “The reality is that it’s very rare that the cultural sector registers with lobbyists. I’ve had many more contacts with the cultural sector. I’ve had tens, hundreds of meetings with them throughout the country, in French or in English,” she said, citing meetings with groups like the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA) and the Writers’ Guild. “I’ve had many more meetings with them than with the large platforms,” Joly added. While the fact that the trio, like other large companies, has a lobbying presence is not remarkable, a search of the lobby registry shows that effort has intensified over the last year. The registry shows that Amazon, between Oct. 1, 2015 and October 2016, had 72 communications reports. Between October 2016 and 2017, that number rose to 106 reports. That was up from only 11 reports in 2014-2015 and none the previous year. The New York Times reported in October that the company has been putting money and effort into beefing up its lobbying presence in the U.S. Google had 21 reports in 2013-2014, 13 the following year, and went back up to 21 in 2015-2016, a number that grew to 38 in 2016-2017. Netflix went from 11 reports in 2013-14 to only two the following year, and 12 communications reports in 2015-2016, which doubled to 22 in the most recent October to October period. Joly’s Creative Canada was billed as a cultural strategy, though it didn’t include any regulatory or legislative changes, instead putting those off to a report commissioned from the CRTC and reviews of the Copyright Act, Broadcasting Act and Telecom Act. During her committee appearance, Joly again pointed to those upcoming reviews as vehicles to address creators’ concerns. The CRTC report is due in June 2018, and the Copyright Act review will begin this month. Start dates for the Broadcast and Telecom Acts haven’t been set. Independent broadcast consultant Kelly Lynne Ashton said in an earlier interview that it could take another couple of years until all of those processes are finished. “Some of those things could happen in the next few months,” she said. “Others are so large I would be surprised if they happen before the next election.” Ashton added that Joly “created expectations when she started this all of this off, said everything’s on the table. We’ve waited almost two years and there’s a vision for a strategy for something that will happen.” Peter Miller, an independent broadcasting consultant, said in an interview in the weeks after the release of the strategy that “this is all going to happen after the next election.” Miller noted the Broadcast and Telecom Act reviews aren’t even likely to start until after the CRTC’s report is finished, adding that the format of those reviews is also unknown, such as whether they’ll be undertaken by a parliamentary committee. The review of that legislation has the potential to be politically touchy, with internet advocates and creative groups at opposite sides of issues like the ISP tax, he said. “If you do nothing, no-one can attack you. The moment you do something, someone’s going to attack you,” he said regarding one of the lessons the government learned from the backlash, especially from Quebec, to Creative Canada. “I think if they didn’t realize how dangerous this was before, they certainly realize how dangerous it is now.” Still, Miller said waiting won’t necessarily cause any harm. “I’ve been watching this for a decade at least, in terms of trying to get a sense of how fundamental the impacts are, whether the current system is sustainable. For the foreseeable future, I think the current system is sustainable.” However, Miller noted that there is always the danger of a tipping point. “I think one can get lulled into a sense that erosion is linear, but it isn’t always linear. It can certainly reach a point where you have a fundamental shift and things just don’t work anymore.” He added: “I would like to believe we have five to 10 years at least, but I wouldn’t want Ottawa to think they have five to 10 years. I would say Ottawa has to be working on a time frame of two to three years, at most three to five.” In an interview following Joly’s committee’s appearance, Nantel said that the situation is critical, as OTT services grow and jobs are threatened. “The machine is tunnelling, and this is a very big problem. People are disappointed because they something to happen.” — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Bryson Masse at bmasse@thewirereport.ca

Creative Canada ‘cultural policy, not tax policy’: Joly

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Creative Canada ‘cultural policy, not tax policy’: Joly

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