Embittered Snyder cuts TV ties
Partner of PQ leader decries lost tax credits
It was an emotional moment Monday as Julie Snyder announced she is abandoning her long career in TV production because her company has been stripped of provincial tax credits.
“It’s very hard,” she said, fighting tears. “It’s my baby. It’s like you are giving your baby to someone else.”
President of Productions J, a factory of hit Quebec shows, Snyder said she is being punished “solely because of my marital status.” Her longtime partner is Pierre Karl Péladeau, controlling shareholder of the Quebecor media empire and recently elected leader of the Parti Québécois.
“I note today that aid for independent production, essential in producing works of quality, is granted by Quebec according to what goes on in my bedroom,” she said in a prepared statement.
The situation remains muddy, and even Snyder was at a loss to explain what comes next for her company and the shows it produces. She said she will step down as president of Productions J, but her news release said she will remain with the company, which also produces music recordings and concerts.
Her predicament illustrates how the 2014 arrival of Péladeau on the political scene has created a hornet’s nest of potential conflict.
Productions J lost its eligibility for the tax credits, which can cover up to 20 per cent of production costs of an eligible program, in the Liberal government’s March budget. But Snyder’s company had only become eligible for them a year earlier in one of the PQ government’s last acts before it went down to defeat.
The rules as they now stand say that an independent producer cannot benefit from the credits if she is “related” to a broadcaster and sells more than half her productions to that broadcaster. As Péladeau’s common-law spouse — the couple is marrying in August — Snyder is considered related, and almost her entire production airs on Quebecor’s TVA network.
Andrée-Lyne Hallé, press attaché to Quebec Finance Minister Carlos Leitao, said the rules were restored in the March budget “to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest” if an independent producer could be seen to have an advantage because of a familial relationship with a broadcaster.
“It was not a political decision,” she said. Premier Philippe Couillard told reporters Monday it was a matter of correcting an “anomaly” created by the previous government. “The tax credits were essentially modified for a single company, compared to other independent producers, who do not have the benefit of being related to a broadcaster,” he said.
Snyder refrained from calling the tax change a political attack, but said she has suffered “a great injustice” and her supporters decried it as sexist. Blogger Léa Clermont-Dion said Snyder was a victim of “retrograde” thinking. “How is that Julie Snyder’s status as a spouse obliges her to divest herself of the business she built and led with success?” she asked.
She would not have been placed in the situation if Péladeau heeded the fre-
It seems I am not as independent as I believed I was
quent warnings that politics and media ownership do not mix.
Péladeau has rejected any suggestion that he should get rid of his Quebecor shares. He has promised to place his holdings in a blind trust, but with orders not to sell the shares of Quebecor, the company started by his late father.
The opposition leader did not comment Monday on his spouse’s dramatic announcement, and really, how could he without being in an obvious conflict? The situation is a taste of what is in store as Quebec politics enter the uncharted territory of having a media mogul vying to lead the province.
“It seems that I am not as independent as I believed I was,” Snyder said Monday. And for that she can thank her fiancé as well as the taxman.