Friends in high places may be a bonus, but today what Canadian producers really need to finance homegrown content are friends in other provinces. For better or worse, the interprovincial coproduction model has become an essential element of indigenous production over the last seven to eight years, meaning increased production in regional centres, more money per project, but less for individual producers.

In the current production climate, with cuts to the Canadian Television Fund, the dramatic drop in international sales and the end of the U.K.’s sale-and-leaseback program for TV copros, many producers are finding it more and more difficult to complete projects without outside provincial producing partners.

‘In a perfect world, where money is not a problem, you want to be the only producer, you want to do it yourself and not have to share your fees and authority with anybody else,’ says Montreal-based Galafilm president Arnie Gelbart. But ‘because the international market is dried up and there is so much less money in sales than ever before, we have to shop around much more for coproducing partners in other provinces.’

Galafilm recently coproduced Agent of Influence with Calgary’s Alberta Filmworks and is currently coproducing its third season of Bliss, erotic stories from female directors, with Toronto’s Back Alley Films.

The coproduction model, described by Gelbart as ‘ad-hoc agreements between various provincial agencies,’ has never been formalized in the way international copros are. Basic rules require a minimum of 20% participation from a coproducing province.

Such cooperation is not limited to TV. Toronto-based 49th Parallel is coproducing Ginger Snaps 2 and 3 with Alberta-based prodco Combustion, which 49th executive producer Noah Segal says was a natural fit because of key locations in Edmonton and because Grant Harvey, director and partner on the Ginger Snaps projects, is from Calgary. But there were also financial factors that contributed to the decision to coproduce.

‘Ontario and Quebec have decent (incentive) programs but they are the busiest provinces and therefore don’t have the most attractive percentage programs, that being said you have to be cognisant as a producer that taking something to another territory has plusses and minuses,’ says Segal.

Laszlo Barna of Toronto’s Barna-Alper Productions, which coproduces 80% to 90% of its material, says in most cases a domestic project benefits from varied input, but creativity and authenticity can be sacrificed when there’s nothing to inspire a coproduction other than financial incentives.

For its part, Barna-Alper recently coproduced Choice, a CTV drama on the life of Dr. Henry Morgentaler, with executive producer Kevin Tierney of Montreal’s Park Ex Pictures. Shot entirely in Montreal, Barna says the coproduction was driven by the creative elements of the script rather than financial necessity.

‘Choice is a natural for Montreal because that’s where most of the abortion story unfolded, where the seminal battles were fought,’ says Barna.

Canadian producers say the ascendance of the coproduction model in the last decade has been driven primarily by economic factors, and most agree that it’s next to impossible to produce Canadian-content programming with the financial resources of a single province.

This seems especially true in Ontario, where relatively low tax credits and the removal of provincial deficit financing under the Harris government played a significant role in driving the coproduction model throughout the country.

When deficit financing from the OFDC (now the Ontario Media Development Corporation) was frozen in 1995, Ontario producers did not have access to enough funding to complete projects in-province, but they were still the ones getting commissioned by broadcasters.

This led Ontario producers to look for coproducing partners in other provinces with better tax credits, like in Quebec, where a producer can count on deriving as much as 15% of the in-province budget from tax credits.

Producing partners also provide access to sources of provincial financing like SODEC in Quebec, Manitoba Film & Sound or the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation.

‘Actually I shoot virtually nothing in Ontario anymore because it’s got the worst tax-credit system in the country. It’s wiped out almost any sort of Canadian drama being produced in Toronto,’ says Bernard Zuckerman, president of Toronto’s Indian Grove.

In fact, of the five films Zuckerman has coproduced in the last 14 months, only one shot in Ontario.

He says all the other films could have been shot in Toronto, but weren’t because of low tax credits and lack of provincial financing combined with various other financial constraints.

‘Seven to eight years ago, there were distributors that were prepared to do much more with regard to deficits. Large companies were prepared to deficit a substantial amount because it was about pushing stock. And broadcasters were not used to putting in huge licences,’ says Zuckerman.

Zuckerman, Barna and Gelbart point to Telefilm Canada’s role in further entrenching the coproduction model, favoring projects that involve more than one province through regional incentives, which allows it to satisfy various provincial mandates simultaneously.

Gelbart suggests additional reasons Telefilm favors coproductions.

For example, if a young Alberta producer approached Telefilm with an ambitious project, partnering with a more experienced Ontario producer would quell the agency’s fears and open doors to new regional producers.

‘So [coproduction] worked financially, it worked in terms of confidence and it seemed so happily Canadian,’ says Gelbart. ‘It certainly helped develop more regional production centres. The fact is that you now have companies like [Regina-based] Minds Eye Entertainment and [Winnipeg’s] Buffalo Gal Pictures; it has allowed regional producers to arise.’

Minds Eye president and CEO Kevin DeWalt says it remains very difficult for Prairie production companies to do a significant production without coproducing partners.

‘From a drama perspective, it’s practically impossible because of the resources that are available in a small province with a small market and a small population,’ he says. But ‘on a coproduction you get to draw from more than one resource and get better projects as a result.’

And there are additional benefits to the copro model. Creatively, ‘you get reflected in the movies in general a very diverse Canada that is Atlantic and Prairie and B.C.,’ says Barna.

Coproducing also provides regional producers access to talent pools from larger centers.

While coproduction has contributed to the growth of regional production, and collaboration provides creative advantages, the model results in lower profits for individual producers. And for Ontario producers like Zuckerman, who says he has become a production gypsy, working at home may be a thing of the past.

‘Sure I want my brethren in Alberta and Manitoba to succeed, but I’d like to be able to shoot [in Ontario]… I like sleeping in my own bed,’ he says. ‘Is [coproduction] part of a cycle or the reality of the new marketplace? I tend to be skeptical and see it as a new marketplace reality.’