The word of the day in business circles, for a thousand-or-so days by now, has been ‘transparency.’ Companies and other large organizations are under pressure from regulators, stakeholders and the public to spell out as clearly as possible every move they make, every loonie they spend, in hope of preventing any embarrassing Enron-esque or Hollinger-ish missteps.

Which is exactly what the Canadian Television Fund wants to do – stop trouble before it can happen. It is, after all, a $270-million pile of public and private cash that is both intended for producers and broadcasters and, in part, governed by those same producers and broadcasters. It would be very easy for conflicts of interest, or charges along those lines, to surface, which is why Doug Barrett wants the fund to be more transparent.

Barrett, CTF’s new chairman as of August, stresses that neither the fund nor its board have been accused of any conflict of interest. ‘Nobody has pointed the finger at us,’ he says. ‘The executive committee felt that we needed to read the wind, be proactive to address the issues and not wait around for a big decision on what should be done.’

The Department of Canadian Heritage audits the fund regularly and is partway through a roundtable discussion on CTF governance that began in March. ‘There was a conscious decision to move in a direction before the end of [Heritage’s] process, because we wanted to show the department we were listening,’ explains Barrett. ‘So we thought we’d get going on the job, before anyone actually pointed the finger at us.

‘Any change on the governance front that can make the people who put money into the fund more comfortable… it’s a slam-dunk step to take,’ says Barrett. ‘We’re moving toward a governance structure [like that of a] public company… where management and the board have structural separation. What we’re trying to deal with is the perception [of potential conflict].’

Barrett – a lawyer who has led the CTF’s corporate secretariat since its inception – is the CTF’s fifth chair, following Phil Lind, Peter Herrndorf, Richard Stursberg and, most recently, Janet Yale, who stepped down in March. He is a partner at the law firm of McMillan Binch LLP, an occasional contributor to Playback and executive chairman of PS Production Services in Toronto. He will chair CTF’s 20-member board for a one-year term.

As an initial step, Barrett struck a five-member independent committee to ensure the CTF’s operations fall within its conflict-of-interest guidelines, in place since 1999. It is the fund’s first watchdog group.

‘What we didn’t have was a public face on that set of guidelines or a proper way of making sure they were enforceable,’ says Barrett. ‘We had the standards but not the process.’

For example, CTF guidelines prohibit board members from discussing funding decisions, which are made by analysts within the organization.

Thorough screening process

Committee members were elected from the main CTF board. Each went through a thorough process that examined their financial interests, judgment, and management of CTF.

At press time, four of the five seats were filled, with Barrett as chair along with University of Montreal communications professor Andre Caron; Susan Peterson, an associate deputy minister at Heritage; and Michael Hennessy, president of the Canadian Cable Telecommunications Association.

Their job is to check CTF activities, including board debate, against the conflict-of-interest guidelines. For instance, funding decisions at CTF are made by analysts within the organization, and are not to be discussed at the board level. The committee met for the first time Sept. 8, just before the CTF board meeting Sept. 9 and 10.

Barrett says that along with the governance issue, his other priorities relate to the effectiveness and efficiencies of guidelines introduced last year.

‘The first priority is that guidelines themselves work as effectively as possible for the client base,’ says Barrett. ‘We agreed last year that structurally this would be a two-year exercise. We were not going to make major systemic changes in the second year, but there is always fine tuning to be done. While we are very pleased with the improvement in application processing, we think there is more to be done, and what I’m mostly talking about is the perception that the way the client industries are being treated and handled is improving from an efficiencies point of view. It’s about making their day-to-day administrative relationship with the fund easier.’

He adds: ‘With the new system, we really wanted to achieve a bunch of administrative efficiencies, again for the client base. Not just to reduce the cost of administration, although some of that has occurred, but to take some of the bureaucracy out of the application process for people who are recipients of funding. And that is an ongoing exercise.’

Keeping standards up for the users of the fund and the investors in the fund is key to maintaining the CTF, which frustrates many for its impermanence.

‘Every year has its challenges,’ says Barrett, referring to the CTF’s volatile history. ‘We never have a year where everyone is happy. We are initially very pleased with the [current] structure. It has found a certain amount of support. People like the flexibility of it. We’re optimistic we can make the kinds of fine tuning to make these things work very well.’

Refined CTF guidelines for next year will be available for year end.

-www.canadiantelevisionfund.ca