The Globe and Mail reports in its Wednesday edition that as the government conducts a national consultation on Canadian content in the digital world, new digital taxes may ultimately play a starring role. Guest columnist Michael Geist writes that Heritage Minister Melanie Joly has opened the door to an overhaul of Canadian cultural policy, but the question is how to pay for it. Officials believe foreign sources of funding from international sales and joint productions could play a pivotal role in bringing new money into the system. The industry has resisted policies that might increase foreign-backed productions on the basis of lost Canadian jobs and less distinctive content. Their hopes appear to rest primarily with a series of new digital taxes. While new taxes are never popular, the possibilities include the proverbial good, bad and ugly. The good involves proposals to divert revenue from spectrum licences to cultural funding, effectively a spectrum tax invisible to consumers. The bad would involve the introduction of a controversial "Netflix tax" that requires on-line video services to contribute a percentage of revenue toward Canadian content. The ugly is a tax on Internet service providers.