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From: acton@mprvaxa.UUCP
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: Free trade, Canadian culture, $$
Message-ID: <842@mprvaxa.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Feb-87 10:45:38 EST
Article-I.D.: mprvaxa.842
Posted: Fri Feb 20 10:45:38 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 24-Feb-87 01:12:31 EST
References: <183@fornax.uucp> <840@mprvaxa.UUCP> <188@fornax.uucp>
Reply-To: acton@mprvaxa.UUCP (Don Acton)
Distribution: can
Organization: Microtel Pacific Research Ltd., Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Lines: 34


I wrote
>>. Considering what the
>> CBC does with its nearly 1 billion dollars I wouldn't hold my breath in
>> any theatre lineup waiting for these movies.

In article <188@fornax.uucp> chapman@fornax.uucp (John Chapman) writes:
>I must be missing something here. What does having Canadian owned (and
>therefore controlled) distributors for movies have to do with the CBC
>or any crown corporation? Nothing like that was even hinted at either
>in my posting or in the Sun editorial.

I fail to see how changing the distributors of a movie to some Canadian
company is going to result in more "good" Canadian movies. The US
owners of the movie are still going to want to make their profit and
if they can't get the profit directly through their own distribution
companies they will just charge our companies more. So now when I go to
a show I will have to pay another middle man so that my meager wealth can be
redistributed even more. What is suppose to happen to this extra money?
Why it is suppose to go to our film industry. How? Through the good
graces of these new film distributors. But why would they do that when
they can take a much smaller risk and be guaranteed a profit by just
taking the movies offered from the US? I fail to see how the
introduction of Canadian film distributors is going to result in
any significant amount of money going to the film industry. Now for a
prediction on the legislation:
  
   When the legislation is introduced the government will either through
a "special tax" (we certainly have enough of those these days) or
provisions similar to those for TV licenses demand that a certain
percentage of this money be made available to film producers. 

  Voila, a new CBC. 

Donald Acton