Canada's Heritage Minister Melanie Joly speaks during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada, December 9, 2015. REUTERS/Chris Wattie© Chris Wattie / Reuters/Reuters
Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly has promised to undertake a massive and long-overdue overhaul of federal culture policy. There are even hints Ottawa could scuttle that most stubbornly buoyant of vessels, Canadian content rules. "Everything is on the table," Ms. Joly told The Globe and Mail.
It would be wonderful to be able to believe those words.
That's not an indictment of Ms. Joly. It's just that this same episode loops by, every few years.
A well-intentioned government comes along with proposals to drag our regulatory regime into modernity. Opposition quietly mounts from long-entrenched and deep-pocketed interests – we're talking about a $48-billion industry – and attempts at serious reform of Our Way of Doing Things are choked off by a cloud of apocalyptic rhetoric.
The constant argument against change is that it risks summoning all manner of evils, everything from extinguishing whole facets of Canadian culture to imperilling the pension nest-eggs of millions who hold telecommunications company stock.
But Ms. Joly is correct when she says, "The current model is broken." Online streaming and the on-demand ethos haven't just altered the rules of the game. From Netflix to Tidal to Amazon and Apple, today's interlopers are playing an altogether different and unfamiliar sport.
Our laws aren't fit for the purpose. The last time the Broadcasting Act underwent major revisions was 1991. Few then envisioned that the Internet, an unknowable digital sprawl and a poor fit with state regulations and laws, would become the dominant global cultural medium.
Well, here we are, stuck today with measures like Cancon – a relic of the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Act of 1932 – strict foreign ownership regulations and mandated carrier fees.
Many aspects of the current apparatus amount to an indirect subsidy of cultural industries. But in its recent budget, the federal government demonstrated its preference for funding them directly.
That's the wiser tack. In today's world, there's no point digging regulatory moats. But try convincing the people whose business models and livelihoods depend on them. We wish Ms. Joly luck.