Bill C-10 will stop Canadian filmmakers hooked on taxpayer dollars from producing movies that threaten Canadian society with undue sex and violence.

That charge was made Wednesday before the Senate committee on banking, trade and commerce as it continues to receive public comments on Bill C-10, Ottawa’s controversial tax credit legislation now hung up in the Senate before possible passage into law.

‘The government should not be funding pornographic or gratuitously violent films or video games,’ Rose Anne Dyson, president of Canadians Concerned About Violence in Entertainment, told the Senate committee.

Urging more family-friendly fare from domestic producers, Dyson urged the Senate to pass legislation that would refuse ‘tax breaks’ to any film or TV scripts that would not be suitable for broadcast on the CBC or TVOntario.

‘It [Bill C-10] could be enormously helpful in shifting the parameters for profit and actually channel creativity to be more consistent with the public interest at large,’ Dyson added.

She warned against giving the film and TV industry carte blanche to draft the guidelines that will accompany the proposed tax credit changes.

‘We don’t want to end up with the fox guarding the henhouse here. We want to ensure representations from all sectors of society in establishing these guidelines,’ Dyson argued.

Heritage minister Joseé Verner appeared before the committee on April 2, when she proposed to delay by one year plans to pull tax credits from film or TV projects to allow the industry to help draft guidelines on which productions should be judged ‘contrary to public policy.’

Diane Watts, a researcher with Science For Peace, a media watchdog body, told senators that Bill C-10 will not lead to any film or TV show being banned or destroyed.

Instead, offending projects will be denied taxpayer funds.

‘Disgruntled artists are really arguing that taxpayer money is an entitlement, no matter how harmful their work is to women, kids and the family,’ Watts argued.

During questioning from the senators, Watt took exception with a statement in Wednesday’s Globe and Mail in which actress Sarah Polley claimed that Bill C-10 threatened artistic expression.

‘This does not interfere with freedom of expression. It interferes with the use of Canadian tax dollars to produce material which is offensive to the Canadian family,’ she countered.

Rose Anne Dyson then interjected that Polley was American, and not Canadian.

Liberal senators quickly corrected Dyson on Polley’s nationality.

Polley and other Canadian film and TV talent and executives will get their own opportunity to address the Senate committee on Thursday morning.

In previous representations to the federal government, industry players have urged that the proposed censorship amendment in Bill C-10 be voided because it threatens to decimate the financial model on which most homegrown films and TV shows get produced.

That controversial amendment to the Income Tax Act would allow the federal heritage minister to revoke a project’s CAVCO certification if it was judged to offend public taste.