Banff, AB: Five years from now the ‘perfect worker’ in showbiz will combine equal parts of business and creative skill, able to ‘dream the picture, shoot the picture and sell the picture,’ according to a new study led by Women in Film and Television – Toronto.

The hefty study sought to track how changes in the industry will affect the workforce in the coming years, finding that the increasingly international trade will demand workers with soup-to-nuts skills including solid grasps of global copyright law, financing and coproduction treaties.

The report, titled Frame Work: Employment in Canadian Screen-Based Media, was released during the Banff Television Festival on June 14.

According to WIFT-T president Kate Hanley, the results are ‘worrisome’ for Canucks, who tend to lack hard business skills. Forty percent of companies surveyed said they have trouble hiring people with financing, development or accounting skills.

Creators have neglected their dollars and cents skills, and the future will be less forgiving, Hanley warns.

The report also found that women and minorities, despite having made significant gains in the industry, are still relatively underemployed. Women-run small- or medium-sized companies have a harder time making it big. It is also harder for women to break into senior positions at the largest companies, making up only 28% of top management spots at Canada’s private broadcasters. ‘There’s still a glass ceiling,’ says Hanley. ‘People assume women have made it in this industry but there are still significant problems.’

The report combines census and survey data with numbers provided by CBC, the National Film Board and the CRTC.