Gunsmoke2 - GS2
2002-04-30, 09:19 PM
Canada's cultural protections are bound to come tumbling down
By DREW ---AN
Tuesday, April 30, 2002 – Print Edition, Page B11
Canada's panoply of cultural protections -- a jerry-built extravaganza of tax credits, production quotas and ownership restrictions -- is going to come tumbling down. The inexorable force of new technologies makes that inevitable.
The only question is when. How long can the vested interests hang on, propped up by a government that ignores the interests of Canadian consumers? How long before the border effectively becomes irrelevant? How long before even Heritage Minister Sheila Copps -- her very title has the smell of nostalgia about it -- realizes that nationalist sentiment no longer can be translated into anything meaningful?
The Supreme Court of Canada decision concerning a law that restricts Canadians' access to foreign satellite television is hardly surprising, in that context. It's hardly even a major setback; the real legal test will come when providers of "grey-market" access to U.S. distributors like DirecTV challenge Ottawa's decade-old law on grounds it violates guarantees in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. (In the meantime, a temporary stay of the court decision was granted yesterday.)
More important are the actions of consumers. And, increasingly, they are expressing their contempt for Ottawa's policies by letting technology set its own boundaries. More than 500,000 Canadian households are picking up foreign satellite feeds. They may now be legal renegades, but they also know police won't soon be knocking at their door.
Still, imagine this: A country deemed to be the gold standard for multiculturalism makes it a crime for immigrants to watch programming in their own language, unless it's provided by the two government-sanctioned purveyors of satellite TV -- Bell ExpressVu and Star Choice.
Want to watch HBO's seven channels too? Well, emigration is one solution. But that probably won't be necessary, unless you're particularly impatient -- the tide is turning anyway.
"It's a leaky dike," noted Christopher Maule, a research professor at Carleton University who specializes in the cultural sector. "With existing and evolving technology, it's increasingly difficult to put on the types of controls and restrictions that have been the basis of Canadian cultural policy."
Book companies, which make much of their revenue as Canadian distributors of foreign titles, are hurt by direct sales from organizations like Amazon.com. Music companies are hit by computer downloading. Canadian radio stations, which must play a certain percentage of domestic content, are challenged by Web-based services based abroad.
The same is true in the television industry, in spades. "Death star" satellite services are a much more powerful challenge to Canadian industry hegemony than occurred 40 years ago when families living near the border surreptitiously brought in U.S. signals with their TV rabbit ears.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission recognizes the futility of new protectionist measures in certain circumstances. Imposing domestic content rules on the Internet, it knows, would make as much sense as telling Canadians how many international long-distance phone calls they can make. But then, the Internet has been wide open from its inception; there is no Canadian corporate dominance to protect.
Ms. Copps, of course, will be one of the last decision makers to recognize what's going on around her. She seems to believe her own rhetoric, and stands firmly at one corner of what Mr. Maule calls an "iron triangle" -- involving producers of Canadian culture and supporters in the nationalist camps of politics and the bureaucracy.
But Industry Minister Allan Rock, who also has vowed to bring down the "grey-market" industry, should know better. He's leading Ottawa's innovation agenda, which is aimed at making Canada more internationally competitive.
Except in this sacrosanct sector, presumably, where Ottawa sees no contradiction between seeking out export markets and maintaining a protected home market. Just a few months ago, Ms. Copps announced a three-year program worth $32-million to boost sales of Canadian culture abroad. She called it "globalization with a soul," but there's no reason why foreign governments should view subsidized Canadian imports any differently than Ottawa now views imports of U.S. programming.
GS2
By DREW ---AN
Tuesday, April 30, 2002 – Print Edition, Page B11
Canada's panoply of cultural protections -- a jerry-built extravaganza of tax credits, production quotas and ownership restrictions -- is going to come tumbling down. The inexorable force of new technologies makes that inevitable.
The only question is when. How long can the vested interests hang on, propped up by a government that ignores the interests of Canadian consumers? How long before the border effectively becomes irrelevant? How long before even Heritage Minister Sheila Copps -- her very title has the smell of nostalgia about it -- realizes that nationalist sentiment no longer can be translated into anything meaningful?
The Supreme Court of Canada decision concerning a law that restricts Canadians' access to foreign satellite television is hardly surprising, in that context. It's hardly even a major setback; the real legal test will come when providers of "grey-market" access to U.S. distributors like DirecTV challenge Ottawa's decade-old law on grounds it violates guarantees in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. (In the meantime, a temporary stay of the court decision was granted yesterday.)
More important are the actions of consumers. And, increasingly, they are expressing their contempt for Ottawa's policies by letting technology set its own boundaries. More than 500,000 Canadian households are picking up foreign satellite feeds. They may now be legal renegades, but they also know police won't soon be knocking at their door.
Still, imagine this: A country deemed to be the gold standard for multiculturalism makes it a crime for immigrants to watch programming in their own language, unless it's provided by the two government-sanctioned purveyors of satellite TV -- Bell ExpressVu and Star Choice.
Want to watch HBO's seven channels too? Well, emigration is one solution. But that probably won't be necessary, unless you're particularly impatient -- the tide is turning anyway.
"It's a leaky dike," noted Christopher Maule, a research professor at Carleton University who specializes in the cultural sector. "With existing and evolving technology, it's increasingly difficult to put on the types of controls and restrictions that have been the basis of Canadian cultural policy."
Book companies, which make much of their revenue as Canadian distributors of foreign titles, are hurt by direct sales from organizations like Amazon.com. Music companies are hit by computer downloading. Canadian radio stations, which must play a certain percentage of domestic content, are challenged by Web-based services based abroad.
The same is true in the television industry, in spades. "Death star" satellite services are a much more powerful challenge to Canadian industry hegemony than occurred 40 years ago when families living near the border surreptitiously brought in U.S. signals with their TV rabbit ears.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission recognizes the futility of new protectionist measures in certain circumstances. Imposing domestic content rules on the Internet, it knows, would make as much sense as telling Canadians how many international long-distance phone calls they can make. But then, the Internet has been wide open from its inception; there is no Canadian corporate dominance to protect.
Ms. Copps, of course, will be one of the last decision makers to recognize what's going on around her. She seems to believe her own rhetoric, and stands firmly at one corner of what Mr. Maule calls an "iron triangle" -- involving producers of Canadian culture and supporters in the nationalist camps of politics and the bureaucracy.
But Industry Minister Allan Rock, who also has vowed to bring down the "grey-market" industry, should know better. He's leading Ottawa's innovation agenda, which is aimed at making Canada more internationally competitive.
Except in this sacrosanct sector, presumably, where Ottawa sees no contradiction between seeking out export markets and maintaining a protected home market. Just a few months ago, Ms. Copps announced a three-year program worth $32-million to boost sales of Canadian culture abroad. She called it "globalization with a soul," but there's no reason why foreign governments should view subsidized Canadian imports any differently than Ottawa now views imports of U.S. programming.
GS2