Well, dear reader, it seems we have a problem.  The Canadian government has just come out with a new cultural policy, and our biggest media/telecom/blood-sucking mega corp doesn't like it.  That's the good news.

The not-good news is there's a whole host of others lined up in opposition to the policy, including just about the whole province of Quebec.  Which is bad.

When Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly announced the policy last week, among the first kvetchers was Bell Media, who came out to say how much they hate it, how unfair it is to them.

You see, the cornerstone of Joly's announcement was the government had extracted from Netflix a promise from the American technology giant to spend half a billion dollars in Canada over the next five years.  This would be, Netflix has since confirmed, all new money and will include the creation of a Canadian production studio.

Well, sign me up!  Anything that Bell thinks is bad almost by definition has to be good.

But over at the Walrus, writer Ira Wells makes the point that the new Liberal policy puts an odd focus on its culture policy: the economy.  And he's right.  In fact, it's right there in the opening line of the government's policy document. "Creative Canada is a new vision and approach to creative industries and to growing the creative economy by the Government of Canada," it says.

So Wells has a good point.  If culture is about moving the soul, why all the emphasis on the pocketbook?  And this is completely fair.

The problem here is the actual application of Canadian Content regulations that were originally intended to preserve the soul of Canadian culture, have torqued over the years.  This policy has given us such gems as 11 seasons — across two networks! — of Murdoch Mysteries.  Our national broadcaster can't even make a watchable documentary series on Canada's history despite being handed oodles of Canada 150 cash, so instead we get the celebrity and reenactment-heavy The Story of Us.

But, probably the worst of all, CanCon has given decades of airtime to the worst song ever written, Patio Lanterns*.

So, that the government is looking for new structures outside the old model is on the whole positive.

But where things start to fall apart is in the selling of it.  First of, as we saw earlier, major players like Bell do not like the change.  But it's not just Bell.  There are a lot of people.

Of course, Joly is running into problems that are becoming typical of everything this government does.  Everything has to tie back in the most brainless way possible to the "middle class," and selling it involves repeating the same three dead-eyed talking points over and over.  Finance Minister Bill Morneau has found this while he's tried to stop people from being labelled a small-business killer.  Remember Miryam Monsef's electoral reform stuff?  Ditto.

You can't just have good policies, you also have to be able to sell them to people.

And, my god, this is at least doubly true when you head to Quebec.

One of the interesting things about moving here as an anglophone several years ago was discovering the self-contained media ecosystem that exists here.  There's a whole galaxy of legitimately famous people in the province I'd never heard tell of as an Ontarian.  Then add to that the cultural sensitivities of being a whole province that speaks a different language.  Then add how it's not clear how much of Netflix's investment, if any, is earmarked Quebec.

Cut to last weekend, where Joly goes on Tout Le Monde En Parle — a Quebec talk show/institution of which there's no real anglo equivalent — and gets absolutely eviscerated by the hosts because she doesn't have answers to any of their questions that go beyond the usual tripe.  If the cornerstone of your new policy is new money from a huge media company, and you, a Quebecer, are going on the biggest Quebec news program, you damn well better have an answer to these questions.

And if you don't?  Well, you're going to see headlines like this in the Globe and Mail: "A stunning fall from grace for Mélanie Joly."

So, even if this new cultural policy is a good thing, and I'm beginning to think it is, the government is already miles behind selling it to the public.  I'm not even sure they're going to be able to get it over the line.

Every time this government tries to make change, they make a hash of explaining why they're doing it before everything falls apart.  The new cultural policy won't matter if they can't figure out how to sell it.  It's time they figure that out.

* I will die on this hill. While Kim Mitchell's oeuvre is awful dreck, top to bottom, Patio Lanterns is far and away the worst thing ever written. I mean, look at this: "And I was stuck on Joy, that was her name/We didn't talk much/She was a nervous girl/I was a nervous boy/We stuck together like glue on glue/Dancing to an old song/Bobby Vinton's Blue on Blue/Heartache on heartache." Blech. Garbage.