What’s this – a federal election over the funding of domestic film and television shows? As unlikely as that may sound, the possibility is looming.

It has come to the boiling point in the debate over the Conservatives’ proposed Bill C-10, which would grant Heritage Minister Josée Verner the power to deny tax credits to any Canadian film or TV show with content deemed ‘contrary to public policy.’

Things started really heating up when Finance Minister Jim Flaherty appeared before the Senate banking committee at the end of last month to defend the Tories’ controversial bill.

‘There are many demands in Canadian society and many needs that need to be addressed,’ Flaherty said. ‘One of them is not the financing of movies or videos depicting extreme violence, hate or pornography.’

Funny, in a time of global warming, looming recession, troops in Afghanistan and political and economic uncertainty to the south, I can’t say I have heard any public outcry calling for Daddy Government to shut down all those morally offensive works that our industry is churning out, and which are soiling our multiplexes and TV screens.

The Tories are sensitive about the term ‘censorship’ critics have hurled at C-10, but shutting down projects is precisely what this bill would do – and not just the films and TV shows that might be the most extreme offenders. Financial institutions – ever cautious about the way their money is spent – would be reluctant to provide loans to any production they felt had any chance of having its tax credits pulled out from under them.

Spreading this kind of uncertainty in the financially strapped film and TV industry would effectively remove the edge from the slate of projects produced in this country. And it is this edginess, seen in works by major film artists such as David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan, that has carved out a place of pride on the global stage for Canadian filmmakers.

It smells like an insidious plot to Disnify the kind of content that gets made here. But edginess is actually the greatest counter-programming advantage of an industry that must compete with the big-buck, bottom-line concerns of a neighboring media titan that counts among its players, er, Walt Disney.

Flaherty went on to say that the bill is ‘the will of the people of Canada.’ Well, it doesn’t represent my will, or that of my neighbor, or, dare I say, that of many of you who are reading this. So let’s just scrap that notion.

There are very few people – and that’s within the industry as well – who would support government subsidies for what they would interpret as extreme violence, hate or pornography, and there is a Criminal Code that can be employed as a standard. And that is what the Liberal Party proposes be used as the standard in an amendment to C-10.

This may sound reasonable, but the Tories will have none of it, as C-10 is really their own will. They want to ram it through to grant themselves the power to dictate what culture is and isn’t ‘contrary to public policy,’ and what projects should and should not be produced. They are being stubborn on the matter, and Flaherty has warned that any such amendments would lead to a confidence vote on the government.

The Liberals, meanwhile, see an opportunity. Lately the Grits have been languishing in the polls, but in the C-10 scuffle they recognize an issue that displays a side of the Tories that could turn some votes in their direction. In response to Flaherty’s comments, they have vowed to stand behind the amendments, even if that triggers a federal election. In a speech at the recent APFTQ conference in Quebec, Liberal leader Stéphane Dion took shots at the legislation, saying, ‘We Liberals, unlike the Conservatives, believe that artistic freedom is good public policy.’ Of course, it’s preaching to the choir, but there you go.

Now that everybody has thumped their chests, it will be fascinating to see how this all plays out. Would the Liberals really stand by their guns and send us to the polls? A recent Toronto Star/Angus Reid survey has the Tories edging the Grits 33%-30% across Canada, with 50% of those polled disagreeing with the Liberals triggering any snap election. One can only deduce, then, that Liberal strategists believe the amendments would go through without a confidence vote.

And that would be the only satisfying outcome to this matter, which has spread unnecessary anxiety throughout an industry that hardly needs any more of it.