Bill C-10 - Tax Credits as Censorship tool

Here is an excerpt from an informative article by Prof. Cossman (Faculty of Law at UT) about the Bill C-10 mess (emphasis added),

And this is where it is useful to remember the history of censorship in this country. When you give officials the open ended power to censor, guess what they do? They censor. Broadly. And often badly. Look at the history of customs censorhip, and film censorship. And every other kind of censorship. Promoting decency becomes a way to censor stuff that is, well, just icky to the official.

And art is often, well, icky. It is subversive, unsettling, challenging. Good films often upset us. They very well might just be icky. I found Eastern Promises, David Cronenburg’s critically acclaimed, but very violent film to be, well, very violent. It was upsetting. It was icky. It could, accordingly, be censored.

Now, every one on down from the Heritage Minister is insisting that films like Eastern Promises and Juno would NEVER be censored. Well, that’s easy to say, now that those films are out in the public sphere and incredibly successful. But, its possible that they just might never see the light of day because an official decided that they were too icky.