Paul Kenyon saw sales drop 45% in April compared to revenue in the same month last year. That’s bad news, not just for the president of Toronto-based Absolute Location Support Services, but also for the production community on the whole.

With 326 probable or suspected SARS cases in Canada and 23 deaths in Toronto, the tourism, restaurant and retail industries all fell dramatically in April. Much of this was fueled by a travel advisory imposed by the World Health Organization and a hyped-up frenzy created by U.S. media.

But few businesses suffered a drop-off like that of the commercial production industry. With close to 50% of work dependant on foreign service shoots and a significant portion of domestic work being awarded to European and U.S. directors, the impact on Canada’s largest production market has been devastating.

Since almost all productions require at least some location shooting, Kenyan says Absolute’s experience in the wake of SARS is probably one of the better measures of the overall impact on commercial production in Toronto. ‘The law of averages would pretty well dictate that our sales are pretty much a barometer of how the industry is doing.’

Indeed, while some producers reported no cancellations, many more say they lost all their roadhouse work in April. While there are numerous other factors leading to the drop-off, including the war in Iraq and a struggling U.S. economy, the spread of SARS was a major blow to local producers.

For service shops such as Treehouse North, which depends entirely on big-budget foreign productions and typically only does a handful of shoots in any one month, the fallout could not have been worse. The shop only had two bookings last month and lost both.

‘In April we didn’t end up doing a thing…[and] anything we lose ends up being huge,’ says Deb Feeney, production supervisor at Treehouse North.

‘Both of our cancellations were out of Europe, not the States. The first one was the beginning of April… this company just canceled all work into Asia or Canada and the last one was [late April].’

The SARS epidemic became a major problem for businesses in Toronto on April 23 when the WHO issued an advisory cautioning against travel to Toronto due to the spread of the pneumonia-like killer. As a result, a number of agencies banned travel to Canada outright either because of fear or insurance rates were bumped up significantly on travel to Toronto.

Despite the fact that the WHO lifted the ban April 30, producers expect the SARS crisis to resonate for months.

According to Paola Lazzeri, partner and executive producer at Avion Films, the Toronto-based production house saw five cancellations and board flow out of the U.S. dry up almost completely in April.

‘We’ve probably lost about $3 million so far,’ she says.

‘We’ve lost all our American stuff. The damage is done. Sure the ban is lifted, but the damage is done because the work that [comes in] now is the only work that happens for a while, and it is gone.’

Tina Pertidis, executive producer at Industry Films, says she spent all of April talking to her American counterparts and agency producers trying to convince them that the situation in Toronto being portrayed in media reports was way over-exaggerated.

‘But when a statement is made by the World Health Organization, it doesn’t matter what we say. At that point you have to ride it out,’ she says.

‘We had a job where we were bidding and they were going to come up here and then the client from the States just said, ‘No, we’re not going to Toronto.’ How about Vancouver? ‘No, we’re not going to Canada.’ That was prior to the ban being lifted.’

But, executive producers are also quick to point out that the timing could have been worse. April is typically one of the slowest months of the year. A SARS outbreak between August and October, the busiest three months in the cycle, would have been far more devastating.

‘We do 60% of our billings during that time,’ says Christina Ford, executive producer at Imported Artists. ‘Fortunately for us in terms of timing, while it was [terrible], it was better than it could have been.’

Other producers wonder if the perceptions and misinformation that undermined spot production in the city could have been offset by a more aggressive response either by local politicians or by the producers’ own association. They say the Commercial Producers Association of Toronto should have been far more proactive in communicating with the U.S. and Europe that the problems in Toronto were not nearly as bad as press reports and the WHO advisory would indicate.

In terms of providing information to U.S. agencies and producers about what was actually happening in Toronto, ‘the [Association of Independent Commercial Producers] in New York was doing much more than our organization in Toronto was,’ says one executive producer, who asked to not be identified.

‘It might just be a cultural difference because in the States they would rally really quickly, while we were just waiting for our quote-unquote leaders to do something.’

The EP also points out that The City of Toronto took out ads in the Hollywood Reporter and Variety to declare the city safe, but there has been no similar move to advertise in ad industry-related trades.

Derek Sewell, an executive of The Players Film Company and also an executive on the board of CPAT, admits the association was slow to come together on SARS, but points out that the travel ban was also lifted in a week, so by the time CPAT got the ball rolling, the crisis was receding.

‘We were assembling the information, in essence. We were going to send a package out to all our members, but with the travel ban being lifted, at this very moment, we are holding off and we’re going to see what the response is,’ Sewell says. ‘I think what we want to do is give it a week or so and see if people start to respond. If it seems as though there is still a problem, then we’ll get more active on it.’

But according to several industry insiders, the fallout could last through the summer, so a proactive stand might be CPAT’s best strategy still.

‘Until we get the all-clear that there are no more cases, whether they are in the hospital environment or not, I think [foreign] producers are going to be very cautious,’ says Kenyon. ‘So I see a recovery, but I think the recovery will be a protracted one and may take as long as six months to get to where we would normally be.’

That’s not good news for an industry that does the lion’s share of its business in the late summer early fall.