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According to the Network of Independent Canadian Exhibitors, independent film theatres in this country are “in crisis” and need public funding to stay alive. The network, whose acronym translates as a very Canadian NICE, says its members need $50,000 a year for the next three years to keep the lights down and the screens alive.
If you’re a stickler on these things, you might wonder how “independent” an industry can be if it can’t survive without regular infusions of government cash. Of course, you could say much the same about the news media, or pretty much any industry.
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“Independence,” in Canadian, means something different from a determination to stand on our own. Notwithstanding the general perception that ours is a market-driven capitalist economy in which entrepreneurial initiative is both encouraged and rewarded, Canada is a land of subsidies.
We’re a member of the G-7 — right? — which is officially a gathering of like-minded, democratic, free-market economies, but don’t let that fool you. If Canadians really think this is a dog-eat-dog economy, they haven’t been keeping close track of their dogs lately. It’s more of a poochie-likes-to-eat-well-but-can’t-afford-the-prices sort of place. Even as modern North America seems obsessed over individual rights, it also thinks responsibilities are the government’s job.
Canada has been at this so long we treat prime examples as revered institutions. The CBC, for instance, got almost $1.3 billion from Ottawa last year due to its alleged status as a lynchpin vital to keeping people informed and connected across the country’s vast reaches, even though it still can’t get enough people to watch or pay for it to ensure its survival. Equally shielded is the “supply management” system that ensures dairy farmers can charge excessive prices for their products, which has been granted regular price increases even as federal Liberals decry grocery chains and blame others for rising costs.
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So safe from competition are supply managed industries that a federal bill working its way through Parliament would protect it from being raised in any future trade talks. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, despite his enthusiasm for banishing “gatekeepers,” can’t muster the gumption to oppose it; only 49 of his 118 Tories voted nay when the bill overwhelmingly passed a Commons vote in June.
Even Canada’s hard-bitten business leaders — those cold-blooded, money-grubbing captains of industry, reviled by left-wingers and “progressives” over their heartless, profit-seeking ways — think it’s the government’s job to keep their revenue streams flowing like the spring ice melt. Some 90 of them — bankers, auto executives, airline bosses, telecom chiefs — fired off a letter to Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland this month pressing her to “amend the rules governing pension funds to encourage them to invest in Canada.” The reason pension funds often choose investments in other countries is because they’re required to seek the best and safest targets, the ones most likely to ensure they can keep sending out pension cheques, whether they’re in Canada or not.
That’s not good enough for CEOs on big paycheques who figure their needs should trump pensioners’. “Government has the right, responsibility, and obligation to regulate how this savings regime operates,” they say. As in, what good is free enterprise if you can’t force people with money to put it where it’s good for us, as opposed to good for them?
Freeland isn’t famed for her reluctance to spend other people’s money, though hopefully she’ll hesitate on this one, given that millions of Canadians are dependent on the security of their pensions to keep food on the table, that people of pension age are known to be keen voters, and that endangering their income has never been deemed a good way to get re-elected.
What lurks behind Canada’s drive to subsidize is a long-nurtured conviction that domestic industries couldn’t survive if exposed to the demon of competition. We pay higher cell phone and wireless prices than almost the entire rest of the world, and complain about it endlessly, but won’t let outside competition enter the market because it might be bad for the few big domestic companies that own the market. We block cheese and butter imports to save us from fearsome rivals like New Zealand and Ireland, which together have about two-thirds the population of Ontario.
Foreign airlines are banned from operating between domestic airports, ensuring a handful of local carriers can charge whatever they like. After the recent failure of Lynx Air, former Air Canada executive Duncan Dee wrote in the Globe and Mail that federal regulations ensure discount airlines have little chance of survival in Canada. “Lynx’s demise should serve as a reminder that the competitive and operating landscape in Canadian aviation is dictated by government policies.”
U.S. stock markets are dominated by products that didn’t exist a generation ago, that were invented by entrepreneurs; Canada’s are dominated by banks and resources.
The people at NICE say a big problem for them is anti-competitive practices by film studios, like forcing them to run a movie for a set period whether it deserves it or not, and establishing “zones” with sole rights to show a hit. They say they need public policy changes and a financial infusion to ensure their future.
So, get in line. Our air fares are higher, our grocery bills are higher, our smartphone charges are higher, our bank charges are crushing, our newspapers are dying and Canada’s accounts are deep in debt thanks to the high-cost independence we’re preserving from competition. God help us should the price of popcorn explode.
National Post
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