The National Film Board

One of the 2012–13 Budget’s main dis­ap­point­ments for the cul­tural sec­tor were the cuts imposed on the audio­vi­sual sec­tor. “Effi­cien­cies” or not, the reper­cus­sions from the cuts to CBC, Tele­film and the National Film Board will have impor­tant con­se­quences for the pro­duc­tion food chain of this impor­tant sec­tor of cul­tural expression.

Let’s look at the case of the National Film Board which will lose 10% of its bud­get ($6.7 mil­lion) on top of hav­ing to absorb infla­tion on goods, ser­vices and salaries.

It seems that because it has been pro-active over the past sev­eral years by embrac­ing new approaches and dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tems, the NFB is rea­son­ably well posi­tioned to man­age the chal­lenge: over the past five years, the NFB has man­aged to rein­vest $11 mil­lion in its activ­i­ties.  It could have done more if there had been no cuts, but it can still do well.

The com­ments from the Her­itage Min­is­ter, The Hon­ourable James Moore, reflect this shift, “Tele­film and the NFB for exam­ple have embraced dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies in ways that were never fore­seen and they’ve had a phe­nom­e­nal suc­cess as a con­se­quence of that and they can actu­ally do with a lit­tle less and they’ll be fine.”

A mere 5 days after the Fla­herty bud­get, the NFB announced, on April 4^th details of the impacts of the cuts and some mea­sures being taken to deal with them through a press release. The bad news first: some 73 loyal employ­ees will lose their jobs; the Fes­ti­vals and events sup­port will be end­ing imme­di­ately; the mediathèque and the cinéRo­bot­h­èque will be closed; and the scope of sup­port to inde­pen­dent film­mak­ers will be reduced (reduc­tion to the Film­maker Assis­tance and the Aide au cinéma indépen­dant du Canada programs.)

How­ever, the NFB is resolved and remain­ing pos­i­tive. Despite the job cuts it will also be cre­at­ing 12 new posi­tions; shift­ing its busi­ness plan; and will be devel­op­ing new rev­enue streams with web and mobile con­tent. Pro­duc­tion funds will be reduced by only 1% of its global bud­get for the short term. Pred­i­cated on being “dis­tinc­tive and inno­v­a­tive”, the NFB’s busi­ness plan, launched late last year, projects rev­enue growth of between 15 and 20% over the next three years. All of the rev­enue will be plowed back into pro­duc­tion and accessibility. For exam­ple, over the next four years the NFB intends to increase the num­ber of pro­duc­tions avail­able on the range of on-line plat­forms from two thou­sand to over five thou­sand (out of the thir­teen thou­sands works in the vaults).

The reac­tion from the pub­lic and artists has been less pos­i­tive how­ever. A sit-in was orga­nized in Mon­tréal on April 10^th to protest the “ide­o­log­i­cal” cuts to Tele­film, the NFB and CBC in front of the Cinéro­bot­h­èque which is now sched­uled to be closed down in Sep­tem­ber. The NDP Her­itage critic, Tyrone Ben­skin, attended the protest and was quoted as say­ing “All these Cana­dian insti­tu­tions con­tribute to who we are and cul­ture is a pil­lar of soci­ety. When you think of great civ­i­liza­tions, you don’t look at their eco­nomic plan.”

In a press release pub­lished on April 21, the Front des réal­isa­teurs indépen­dants du Canada (FRIC) felt that the Fran­coph­one com­mu­nity had more ques­tions than answers: “What are the fore­casts of the NFB on human and finan­cial resources devoted to OLMCs in the com­ing years? How do they intend to main­tain the pro­duc­tion vol­ume of Ontario and West Stu­dio with­out any directors, producers, and only one assis­tant to serve eight provinces?” In short,the FRIC won­ders how the NFB will com­ply with Arti­cle 41 of the Offi­cial Lan­guages ​​Act.