Now that the Writers Guild of Canada has ended 18 months of negotiations with English and French producers and struck a tentative independent production agreement with both groups – a deal being voted on as Playback went to press – the guild has other pressing issues to address.

The Independent Production Agreement covers most screenwriters, but the wgc also has collective agreements with ctv and cbc, and the guild will now focus on the ctv agreement, according to wgc executive director Maureen Parker.

Next up on the slate for the writers’ advocate is ensuring writers have access to development financing in the production process so that it is a normal course of business. Parker is very encouraged by an initiative proposed recently by bce/ctv in which the telecom company would establish a writer-accessed development fund of $5 million to be spent over seven years. This fund would form part of a $232-million benefits package set up by bce as part of its deal to pay $2.3 billion to buy ctv, a deal currently under consideration by the crtc.

ctv vp of dramatic television Bill Mustos says bce’s objective in setting up the writers’ development fund was to allow the broadcaster to work more closely with writers. As Mustos told Playback earlier this year, ‘when a writer pitches us an idea we really love we have wished that we could have had the opportunity to develop it just with that writer, just for a few stages, so that we really are getting the project that we want.

‘It sometimes can get complicated when there’s a producer involved who may have certain ideas and [their] affiliated distribution arm [has] other ideas. The more partners you have in the mix the more difficult it is to explore a single creative vision or idea.’

Of course, Mustos notes that, ‘At a certain juncture, a producer will need to be attached, and that’s appropriate.’ In addition, he says, ‘Life and literary rights would have to be sorted out with the writer.’

wgc’s Parker says she expects this fund will be linked to drama projects.

Elsewhere on the guild’s lobbying agenda, says Parker, is an ongoing push to have creators represented on the board of the Canadian Television Fund. ‘We want writer/producers on the ctf board. So far, producers are represented, but not artists,’ she says, adding that the guild is also ‘urging the federal government – the minister of heritage – to create a development component to the ctf. We have approached a few broadcasters and the cftpa and to date the immediate response has been extremely positive.’

The guild also advocates for its members on a wide range of issues beyond its big priorities of contract negotiations and production fund governance and usage. It wants the federal government to ‘bring in legislation protecting copyright holders. The iCravetv issue affected us all….In Canada we don’t have a definition of authorship for the audiovisual world….Most European countries have a definition of authorship.’

But before writers need to concern themselves with payment for their work, and protection of that work as intellectual property once created, the issues of how to land and execute assignments effectively must be tackled. Advocates of the writer’s craft, as with any craft, have to assure continual development of a pool of young scribes, or at least emerging writers, to bolster the talent base. The guild has had terrific response this year to its two ‘Introduction to Television’ workshops, held in Toronto in January and in Vancouver last month. wgc wants to build on that success by adding seminars on miniseries and mows next year. *

-www.writersguildofcanada.com