When the fax machine at the Licence Fee Program of the $200 million ctcpf is switched on at 9:00 a.m. on April 1, the race to spend the cash will officially have begun.

Permanent guidelines for the lfp of the Canada Television and Cable Production Fund are in the mail at press time, and a package is making its way to each producer on the lfp mailing list. Telefilm Canada confirms that its Equity Investment Program guidelines will be in the mail to clients by Monday, March 10.

As for the contents of each package, both the eip and the lfp had previously released the broad strokes on Valentine’s Day at the Canadian Film and Television Production Association’s annual confab in Ottawa.

‘We’ve been working on the contents and structure of these guidelines since the end of our nation-wide industry consultation tour in November,’ says departing lfp executive director Bill Mustos. ‘We’ve completely overhauled the document itself to try and make it as clear and user-friendly as possible.’

To that end, the lfp is holding producers workshops in Vancouver, Montreal and Halifax on March 21 and in Toronto on March 24, with a similar workshop to be held at the Banff Television Festival in June. Telefilm currently has no plans to run similar seminars for the eip.

The eagerly awaited new guidelines take effect on April 1, and the lfp, being first-come, first-served, is taking great pains to maintain a level playing field until then. Any applications for the 1997/98 fiscal year received at the lfp prior to the opening of business on April 1 will be returned to the sender.

Meanwhile, the lfp has confirmed that it has spent all of its French-language television envelope for 1996/97. There were early concerns about the program’s ability to allot all the money in the time available, but the lfp topped up 105 French-language projects in 1996/97 as compared to 47 in 1995/96, spending the entire $26.7 earmarked in support of $189 million worth of production.

At press time, leadership of the lfp is on the agenda at the ctcpf board of directors meeting in Vancouver on March 6. It has already been announced that Mustos will leave the lfp to take up vp of dramatic programming duties at Baton Broadcasting System on March 17. Corrie Coe, former director of the Ontario Film and Television Tax Credit, has been appointed acting executive director of the lfp, and sources point to her as a potential permanent replacement. Nonetheless, the ctcpf board will strike a search committee.

With the unprecedented amount of money at stake, and with the pressure on to maintain the objectivity to which the success of the lfp (formerly the Cable Production Fund) is widely attributed, the impartiality of the new director will need to be unquestionable in order to insure that the program is perceived as equitable.

Among the attachments to the lfp package is a guide for broadcasters on eligible and ineligible licence fees, thresholds and caps, which also includes a warning that the lfp ‘will closely scrutinize any Independent Producer projects which suggest the producer is not truly independent of the Canadian Broadcaster.’

In response to concerns from small to medium-sized producers about the possibility of vertically integrated and/or public companies getting the jump on them under the first-come, first-served model, the package has an attachment called ‘Can Producers Guarantee Financing From Uncommitted Third Parties?’ which includes a section on producers who claim the ability to self-finance. It attempts to assure all applicants that every application must include a locked financial structure, documentation from all anticipated financial participants, and tangible assurance that all participants can honor their commitments.

Another issue which may be addressed by the ctcpf board during their meeting is a request from Diversi Film & Video Fund for a $1 million annual allocation from the ctcpf. The group is lobbying that the funds be earmarked for artists from aboriginal and culturally/racially diverse communities. Project coordinator Gillian Williams says dfvf reps Clement Virgo (Rude) and Christene Browne have met with reps from Canadian Heritage to plead their case.