invades

the Hill

‘The campaign is on,’ says Dennis Mills, parliamentary secretary of the federal Ministry of Industry. Mills is referring to the Canadian Film and Television Association’s invasion Nov. 15 of Parliament Hill to lobby against indiscriminate cuts to the industry. Mills vows he will ‘do everything short of bombing this place,’ to support the film and tv industry.

Since Mills’ Toronto riding holds the highest concentration of film technicians and studio space of any riding in the country, his enthusiasm is not surprising. But according to producers who attended the meetings, it is definitely rare.

When 40 members of the cftpa gathered to meet with officials from the ministries of Trade, Finance, and Heritage, the Prime Minister’s office and with opposition critics, they discovered what cftpa president Sandra Macdonald calls ‘an astounding degree of ignorance. We learned that we should have been doing this twice a year for the last 10 years,’ she says.

The cftpa had stats on hand to push at government officials: the film and television industry boasts a 225% increase in total revenue earned over the last decade, a current annual tally of 31,000 employees, and a $1.9 billion annual injection of combined direct and indirect benefit to the gross domestic economy.

These numbers were taken to Parliament Hill to try and ward off impending cuts to Telefilm Canada and the cbc and to enforce the need for a refundable tax credit.

This is the first time the cftpa has done this, says Macdonald, and the decision to lobby Ottawa en masse was made in the face of the upcoming February budget.

Steve Levitan of Protocol Entertainment says although this is just a beginning, the day was less than perfect. ‘The people we met with all seemed to fall back on the message that the government is committed to reducing debt, and across-the-board cuts are coming and they are going to be painful.’

Create jobs

The most effective argument, says Kevin Shea, coo of Atlantis, is to uphold the industry’s ability to create jobs and generate revenues. ‘There are only two things the government cares about: job creation and reducing the deficit. If we’re an industry that can demonstrate that we accomplish both those things, plus prove we have a cultural benefit, then maybe we won’t be on the hit list in February.’

Shea says there are rumors that, at the end of the day, Finance will make across-the-board cuts, and that is what he is fighting. Such a move would mean ‘impairing sectors that (the government) should be investing in,’ he says.

Macdonald thinks there are alternatives. ‘There are two separate things going on in the government: one is the Department of Finance’s overall targets for deficit reduction. At the same time, there has been an overall program review to look at individual programs. So in fact, (program review head Marcel Masse’s) emphasis is a very selective cut. Some things could be considerably deeper than the 5%, and some, if they were considered valuable, could be less.’

Shea is concerned that if support systems are taken away, not only will money be lost and Canadian content suffer, but the industry may pick up and move elsewhere. ‘We don’t want to threaten (the government),’ he says, ‘but we have become experts in certain areas of craftsmanship and we are exportable.’

Government response to the producers’ plight ranged from some interest to serious resistance, says Macdonald, and the opposition came on heavy from the Reform Party. ‘Our members who went to their (Reform) mps got a uniform reaction that they do not support any public assistance to business. They also said the cbc and all cultural institutions should be done away with,’ says Macdonald.

Another factor that got in the way was the information highway. Shea says attention on the I-Way has taken away from government concerns for content and culture. ‘These have been left out of the mix, so (the government) is now trying to cobble together committees to focus on culture.’

One product of this phenomenon is an entertainment committee put together by Industry officials, and Levitan met with them. He found a group of three who knew nothing of the industry and said as much. ‘They said they have as much to learn from us as we do from them.’

Needs more data

The group has begun looking at the industries, he says, ‘only because the government needs more data about Viacom to formulate its policy regarding Viacom Canada.’

When Levitan met with some entertainment policy officials in Industry, the picture was improved only in that these people were very knowledgeable, he says. ‘Their primary concern is the infohighway and what effect that is going to have. Questions are: how do we ensure that Canadian programs continue to get made? Nobody had any answers. It was a big issue.’

Although the overwhelming response of the day was ‘energetically non-committal,’ Levitan says he is keen to follow up with more sessions with government officials, next time with proposals to solve fiscal woes and cultural protection in hand.

‘People (in the government) were looking for us to come up with proposals, and as a group we were unprepared. But the strategy was just to increase awareness and begin a dialogue. We wanted to make them realize that we are a big business, we’re not just a bunch of hippies in basements being creative. I think we accomplished that very well. I think the follow-up is the very difficult part and now it is most important,’ he says.

No one-day battle

The battle is no one-day affair, says Macdonald, but a continuing effort that, to date, involves meetings with government officials through to Christmas.

So far, Levitan sums up the crusade by betting that a tax credit is on the way, but not in this budget. He also thinks Telefilm is going to be in for a tough battle. ‘I think cuts will be imposed and I don’t that there is going to be much sympathy for Telefilm.’ As for the cbc, ‘The (bureaucrats) all wonder why it costs a billion dollars to run two English and two French networks,’ he says. ‘They just don’t get it. They say nice things about the cbc, but they don’t say they support it.’

For the next round, Shea says, ‘We still need better information and we have to have the same tack that very well-turned-out associations do, whether it’s the plastics association or whatever.’