Montreal: Two new reports on the effectiveness of the Canadian Television Fund are recommending dramatic changes to longstanding industry institutions, including Telefilm Canada, in the context of exploring ways of improving the fund’s operations and overall coherency.

A kpmg report prepared for the Department of Heritage recommends ctf consist of one program with various funding mechanisms, including licence fee top-up, equity investment, grants, loans, lines of credit or a combination of more than one mechanism.

A ctf-commissioned report prepared by David J. Silcox and Francois Colbert recommends all tv funding – including the $102.5-million Licence Fee Program top-up envelope and the $107-million eip equity-investment envelope managed by Telefilm – become the sole responsibility of the ctf’s board. The authors further recommend board members be appointed by Heritage, and that the overall ctf fund be increased by $50 million a year.

Both reports (www.pch.gc.ca) have proposed a single administration and board. Telefilm has to answer to two boards – the ctf’s and its own – which the authors say raises the question of ultimate accountability.

As it stands, the ctf’s future is in the hands of government, although extensive industry consultations have been promised, says cftpa president Elizabeth McDonald.

‘There is also an issue around the fund because there is not enough money to supply all the projects, and that provokes issues that become policy issues,’ she says.

McDonald says it’s entirely appropriate government funding programs undergo evaluation, both as they come up for renewal, and in the present perspective of a new feature film fund and general industry growth.

She says membership has yet to be consulted, ‘but I would say there is a lot of misunderstanding about the recommendations.’ She says equity funding will continue independent of any structural changes or the advent of a new standalone feature film fund.

The ctf also recently reviewed the equity issue, and chairman Richard Stursberg says the board has decided to continue with the fund’s equity arrangements. ‘Yes, it’s appropriate to have two different kinds of financing,’ he says.

Package of changes

The cftpa is waiting for a response from Heritage, says McDonald, ‘because we understand [Heritage’s] view on the ctf, on feature films and simplification of the tax credit are [being considered] as part of a package of changes. I also understand from the deputy minister that any changes from these studies will not go forward until there is broad consultation with the industry. There doesn’t have to be any losers. Everybody can be winners,’ she says.

Stursberg says the ctf board can’t deal with the report’s major structural recommendations, even if there is a consensus.

He says government controls ‘the two big pieces of machinery,’ the financial contribution agreements which include the public share of the lfp funds and the eip funds managed by Telefilm.

‘We think the strains have been showing for some time between the administration of the fund itself and Telefilm Canada,’ says cab president Michael McCabe.

McCabe says cab supports the recommendation for a unified fund and single board.

McCabe says the ctf has matured to the point where it should be reconstituted independent of Telefilm, which he says should be reassigned a promotional and development role for the Canadian film and tv industry. ‘Telefilm should be going back to its feature film roots and get the money to be effective in the feature business,’ he says.

Stursberg says while there have been big improvements in ctf operations over the past two years, ‘that doesn’t address the governance and accountability questions.’ ‘Generally speaking we’ve made [ctf] much more Canadian, much more market-oriented and more competitive among various producers and broadcasters. We have made Telefilm, I think, more transparent and we’ve linked them together better than they were linked in the past.’

Stursberg says ‘while the two programs [eip and lfp] are synched up better,’ wide-scale, systemic oversubscription remains indispensable ‘because it raises the competitive bar for everybody.’

And if viewpoints differ across the industry, Stursberg says there’s also a notion the public role has diminished, naturally, over time, as the industry has expanded and become more sophisticated.

The kpmg report goes on to say ctf and Telefilm have different mandates and objectives, and there are ‘significant differences between guidelines and procedures of the eip and lfp, including different genre allocations, different rigor in evaluating applications, and greater or less subjectivity applied to the evaluation process.’

The Colbert/Silcox report refers to the widely held theory of an uneasy partnership with ctf.

The report says a unified ctf board needs to be more focused and coherent, and ctf policy objectives have been undermined because of its divergent public and private mandates.

Authors of the kpmg report include Marilyn Dolenko of kpmg, Dr. Gerry Wall and industry consultants Peter Fleming and Suzanne D’Amours.