{"id":39032,"date":"2017-06-22T05:00:28","date_gmt":"2017-06-22T09:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=39032"},"modified":"2017-06-21T09:41:32","modified_gmt":"2017-06-21T13:41:32","slug":"the-netflix-tax-is-dead-again-this-thing-was-a-turkey-and-trudeau-was-right-to-wring-its-neck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/06\/22\/the-netflix-tax-is-dead-again-this-thing-was-a-turkey-and-trudeau-was-right-to-wring-its-neck\/","title":{"rendered":"The Netflix tax is dead (again) – “This thing was a turkey, and Trudeau was right to wring its neck.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Selley<\/a> rejoices in the demise of the so-called “Netflix tax” proposal, but also pours scorn on yet another proposal to prop up Canadian print media organizations:<\/p>\n

Justin Trudeau wasted little time last week rubbishing the Heritage Committee\u2019s so-called \u201cNetflix tax,\u201d and no wonder. If you\u2019re determined to raid people\u2019s wallets to fund journalism they\u2019d rather not pay for and Can-con programming they\u2019d rather not watch, you\u2019re far better off doing it shadily than with a shiny new tax on something people love. The sound bytes winging around in the idea\u2019s favour were, in a word, pathetic: \u201cit\u2019s not a new tax, but an expanded levy!\u201d; \u201cwe already tax cable, why not Internet?\u201d; \u201cwe already subsidize magazines, why not newspapers?\u201d<\/p>\n

Good God, why any of it? This thing was a turkey, and Trudeau was right to wring its neck.<\/p>\n

Newspaper publishers and union bosses remain undaunted in pursuit of unearned public funds, however. \u201cCanada\u2019s newspaper industry unites to advocate for Canadian Journalism Fund,\u201d proclaimed a headline at News Media Canada, the publishers\u2019 lobby group. They\u2019re savvy enough to propose tying subsidies to employed journalists\u2019 salaries \u2014 35 per cent to a maximum of $30,000 per head \u2014 rather than just cutting cheques. That might fend off Executive Bonus Rage, but it won\u2019t fend off sticker shock: the suggested eventual cost is a whopping $350 million a year.<\/p>\n

As a taxpayer I would much rather subsidize Canada\u2019s journalists than Canada\u2019s legacy media companies \u2014 but I would sure as hell rather subsidize neither. The more beholden to government a country\u2019s journalists, the less free its press. Magazine writers in this country know their publications get a top-up from Ottawa in the form of the Canadian Periodical Fund. That\u2019s not ideal. But under News Media Canada\u2019s proposal, we would know our jobs literally depended on government largesse. I\u2019ll take a hard pass on that.<\/p>\n

Publishers\u2019 and union bosses\u2019 claims of unanimous support notwithstanding, many unionized journalists, and many of your non-unionized friends here at the National Post, hate the idea. It risks narrowing Canada\u2019s already remarkably narrow spectrum of acceptable ideas and arguments. It risks \u2014 no, guarantees \u2014 alienating the very consumers we need to attract. In the case of some legacy media outlets it would simply extend the runway for business models that everyone knows will never fly again. In any event, the sums being bandied about wouldn\u2019t solve the crisis as a whole unless the solution was permanent and ever-greater government dependency. I\u2019m amazed to see how many journalists, including some very nearly pensionable ones, support the idea.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Selley rejoices in the demise of the so-called “Netflix tax” proposal, but also pours scorn on yet another proposal to prop up Canadian print media organizations: Justin Trudeau wasted little time last week rubbishing the Heritage Committee\u2019s so-called \u201cNetflix tax,\u201d and no wonder. If you\u2019re determined to raid people\u2019s wallets to fund journalism they\u2019d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,6,84,28],"tags":[224,887,477,213,793,118],"class_list":["post-39032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-cancon","category-government","category-media","tag-freedomofthepress","tag-justintrudeau","tag-magazines","tag-newspapers","tag-subsidies","tag-taxes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-a9y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39032"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39033,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39032\/revisions\/39033"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}