FILM POLICY IS CULTURAL POLICY

Ottawa, March 29, 2005 — Last Decem­ber, the House of Com­mons Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on

Cana­dian Her­itage announced that it was going to “con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive study on the

evolv­ing role of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment in sup­port of the Cana­dian fea­ture film industry”.

The Stand­ing Com­mit­tee stated that the focus of their study would be on the “influ­ence and

effec­tive­ness of the Gov­ern­ment of Canada’s Cana­dian Fea­ture Film Pol­icy (2000)”, as well as

“the struc­ture and effec­tive­ness of exist­ing direct and indi­rect sup­port mech­a­nisms” (i.e.,

Tele­film Canada, the National Film Board, Cana­dian Tele­vi­sion Fund, fed­eral pro­duc­tion and

ser­vices tax credits).

Aware of the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts’ ongo­ing role in ensur­ing that artists and

cre­ators con­tribute freely and fully to Cana­dian soci­ety, as well as our com­mit­ment to

pro­vid­ing expert advice on pub­lic pol­icy in arts and cul­ture, the CCA made a written

sub­mis­sion to gov­ern­ment.  Enti­tled “Telling Cana­dian Sto­ries”, the full text of CCA’s

sub­mis­sion is on our website.

The Stand­ing Com­mit­tee began hold­ing pub­lic hear­ings in Ottawa at the begin­ning of

Feb­ru­ary and future hear­ings will be held in Win­nipeg (April 4), Toronto (April 6–7), Montreal

(April 20–21), Van­cou­ver (May 4–5), and Hal­i­fax (May 18–19).  CCA National Direc­tor Jean

Malavoy and Peter Flem­ing appeared before the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Thurs­day, March

24th and empha­sized the fol­low­ing points dur­ing their one hour presentation:

1.  Film pol­icy must be dri­ven by cul­tural goals to ensure that Canada’s national cinema

reflects Cana­dian views, val­ues and expe­ri­ences, as well as indus­trial objec­tives to ensure

the sus­tain­abil­ity of the film industry.

* CCA rec­om­mended that the com­mit­tee take a broad view of the task of evaluating

the fed­eral fea­ture film pol­icy, look­ing at its suc­cess and fail­ure in meet­ing the four

major goals set out in the 2000 Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage pol­icy, “From

Script to Screen”.  The text of this gov­ern­ment pol­icy is avail­able here:

www.canadianheritage.gc.ca/pc-ch/sujets-subjects/arts-culture/film-video/scriptpolicy_e.cfm

2.  Film pol­icy must aim to ensure that Cana­di­ans have access to the diverse sto­ries of

Cana­di­ans, from all regions of the coun­try, and from all backgrounds.

* CCA rec­om­mended that the fed­eral agen­cies that fund fea­ture film ini­tia­tives should

main­tain and increase Eng­lish and French-language fis­cal envelopes for fea­ture film,

and sup­ple­ment them with new money for Abo­rig­i­nal and multicultural

pro­duc­tions.

3.  Devel­op­ing a strong Cana­dian film indus­try takes a con­certed effort from a wide variety

of play­ers – pub­lic and private.

* CCA believes that Canada’s fea­ture film pol­icy should aim for harmonization,

instead of inte­gra­tion, of all the dif­fer­ent fed­eral mech­a­nisms for fis­cal and program

sup­port.

* CCA rec­om­mended that fund­ing for all the major inter­ven­ers in the fea­ture film

process, includ­ing Tele­film, the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts, the National Film

Board, and the Cana­dian Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion should be main­tained, or

increased where possible.

* CCA stated that the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee should con­sider means of ensur­ing more

Cana­dian broad­cast­ers to become involved in the financ­ing and pre­sen­ta­tion of  Cana­dian fea­ture film; by reg­u­la­tion, if required, as well as new fis­cal incen­tives to reward their  com­mit­ments. Fur­ther­more, CCA believes that, as the national pub­lic broad­caster, CBC must play a major role in such efforts.

4.  Account­abil­ity for pub­lic funds is essen­tial but must not encum­ber the process to the extent that it

becomes the end in itself.

* CCA under­stands the wish to ensure that tax­pay­ers’ monies are invested effec­tively and

effi­ciently.  How­ever, CCA argued that if sys­tems become so com­plex that the sup­port provided

becomes overly expen­sive to access, Cana­di­ans face the prob­lem of direct­ing too much public

money to process and not enough to production.

For more infor­ma­tion about the CCA’s pre­sen­ta­tion, includ­ing ques­tions and answers with committee

mem­bers, the min­utes of the meet­ing will be soon avail­able at:

www.parl.gc.ca/committee/CommitteeList.aspx?Lang=1&PARLSES=381&JNT=0&SELID=e22_.2&STAC

=1089934

Accord­ing to the stated inten­tions of the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee, the interim find­ings of this study should be avail­able by the end of June 2005.

*********************************************************

MORE USEFUL CULTURAL STATISTICS RELEASED

Sta­tis­tics Canada has released four prod­ucts that exam­ine the cul­tural sector’s

con­tri­bu­tion to Gross Domes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) and employ­ment in var­i­ous Cana­dian jurisdictions.

Down­load­able ver­sions of all four prod­ucts can be found at:  www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/87–008–

GIE/them/economiccont.htm

Fig­ures from 2002 show that the direct impact of cul­ture on GDP was $40 bil­lion that year, while the

direct impact on employ­ment amounted to 600,000 jobs (includ­ing full-time and part-time employed and self-employed posi­tions). Both of these fig­ures rep­re­sent a sub­stan­tial increase from 1996: growth in

cul­ture GDP was 37%, while cul­ture employ­ment grew by 15%. The 2001 report shows that, because of

the growth in the over­all econ­omy, cul­ture GDP remained con­stant as a per­cent­age of the overall

Cana­dian GDP (3.77% in 1996 and 2001).

In 2002, cul­ture GDP and employ­ment were both dom­i­nated by the three largest sub-sectors:

* writ­ten media: $17.4 bil­lion GDP impact (44% of cul­ture sec­tor GDP) and 158,900 employment

posi­tions (27% of cul­ture sec­tor employment);

* broad­cast­ing: $4.7 bil­lion (12%) and 55,200 employ­ment posi­tions (9%); and

* film: $3.1 bil­lion (8%) and 71,600 employ­ment posi­tions (15%).

The “provin­cial per­spec­tive” report shows that cul­ture GDP increased in every province

between 1996 and 2001, although Saskatchewan expe­ri­enced only a very small increase.  As a

group, Ontario, Que­bec and British Colum­bia accounted for 82% of the national GDP impact

and 81% of the national employ­ment impact in 2001.

The detailed national and Ontario reports rein­force pre­vi­ous find­ings (see, for instance, Canada’s

Cul­tural Sec­tor Labour Force from the Cul­tural Human Resource Coun­cil) con­cern­ing some characteristics

of cul­ture sec­tor work­ers, includ­ing full-time vs. part-time work, unem­ploy­ment rates as well as public

and pri­vate sec­tor employment.

(More infor­ma­tion on these stud­ies can be found in Hill Strate­gies Research Inc’s Arts Research Monitor,

Vol­ume 3, no. 9, avail­able at www.hillstrategies.com)