Ken Ferguson is president of Toronto Film Studios and one of the leading advocates for film and TV production in Ontario. TFS was selected by TEDCO, a city-owned agency, to build the new Film/Media Complex in Toronto’s Port Lands, due to open in 2006.

It was one of the most diverse gatherings of film and television industry leaders ever assembled in Toronto: producers of both foreign and domestic work, reps from every major union and guild, equipment suppliers, studio operators, post-production executives, commercial producers, hotel managers, caterers, financiers, entertainment lawyers – 150 participants in all.

The Nov. 26 event held in the commissary at Toronto Film Studios was a hastily called open forum – a non-partisan assembly inviting everyone to speak openly about the problems facing Toronto’s sagging industry.

Five days earlier, a similar event had been held in Vancouver. The notes from that meeting reveal that the discussions in both forums were remarkably similar. Provincial tax credits too low. Canadian dollar too high. People got too greedy. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s rhetoric. Other provinces stealing our work. Things will never again be the same. Need to retool. Need to develop a unique identity. Need to be an industry leader, not a follower… let’s meet again in two weeks.

No doubt, positive actions will come out of both camps. Public awareness will be raised. Provincial cabinet ministers will be held to the fire. Industry associations will become more cohesive. Our core skills will be honed. Public relations and marketing efforts will become more effective.

But what about broader issues? Both Toronto and Vancouver have lost much of their bread-and-butter business for two primary reasons: either it doesn’t exist anymore (such as MOWs that have been replaced by reality TV), or it’s going to jurisdictions that are frivolously outbidding us.

How do Canada’s long-established film centers deal with those odds? And where do our provincial and federal governments stand on the future of our industry?

When the matter was raised in the Ontario legislature recently, Finance Minister Greg Sorbara rejected the notion of increasing tax credits (ignoring an election promise), and stunned industry followers by responding, ‘Instead, we have a better way of competing. We are going to help generate the most skilled labor pool and talent pool on the continent.’

Well, guess what Greg, your predecessors beat you to it. We already have the best labor and talent pools on the continent. They’re just not working in Toronto anymore.

Look at the growing list of cities around the world that have studied the Canadian model and copied it. They offer alluring incentives to attract films, then work hard to build an infrastructure of facilities, equipment and skills before they run out of cash. Louisiana and New Mexico, for example, are on a tear, spending insane amounts of money to create an industry that has little other basis to be there. Likewise, Romania, South Africa and others.

But, this is also true for many provinces and territories in Canada. Well-established, world-renowned film centers are being dismantled and their parts shipped to disparate regions around the country so we can all share the wealth.

But isn’t that like taking apart the Ford plant in Oakville, ON, so we can create an auto industry somewhere else? Somehow governments don’t see it that way. In fact, Ontario recently offered Ford a $200-million grant for improvements to protect 3,900 jobs in the Oakville plant.

The film industry, on the other hand, is a stealth employer – there are no big plants or well-connected CEOs to keep their agendas in the public light. Film stays under the radar, working on this street today, and in that warehouse tomorrow. Fifty percent unemployment in the film industry doesn’t manifest itself in the form of hulking abandoned plants with padlocked gates.

Ontario seems to take its 25,000 film workers for granted. Meanwhile, other provinces see the film industry as the panacea for economic development. But does anyone question the rationale of upstart film centers?

If the tax credits are high, the program is likely revenue-neutral, costing governments as much as they gain. Nor do they increase Canada’s competitiveness – they simply steal business from one region and give it to another, usually at the expense of film workers who are literally forced to move from their homes in established centers to work somewhere else because the upstart regions don’t have a skill base.

Executive producers are the only winners in this race-to-the-bottom as we feed on each other’s livelihood.

Surely some national guidance is needed here. This is not about excluding various regions in Canada from this industry. But it makes little sense to dilute the considerable infrastructure and recognized skills of established film centers to create a bunch of smaller centers with limited infrastructure. How does this improve Canada’s competitiveness, especially in world markets where foreign governments are investing heavily in large studios?

The only way to compete on a global scale is to strengthen our primary film centers – yet government policy seems tilted away from this logic. In Ontario, a regional bonus offers higher tax credits to film outside Toronto. This while the city waits anxiously for private capital to be invested in a new megastudio complex in the Port Lands.

There are other policies that discriminate against Toronto, as well. In this-could-only-happen-in-Canada fashion, the Canadian Television Fund provides regional bonuses, but the only non-regions in the land are Toronto and Montreal – and Montreal has recently applied for regional status.

Ergo, Toronto-based writers and producers who are trying to tell Toronto stories are forced to film in other provinces because of skewed funding criteria and more lucrative tax credits.

This is not to discredit the thoughtful rationale for CTF’s policies. But surely they were developed to level the playing field so stories from various regions and cultures could be told – not to facilitate the dismembering of the film industry’s version of a Ford plant.

So, this brings us back to that room full of film industry leaders Nov. 26. How does a major film and television center like Toronto reestablish itself as an industry leader? Indeed, how can it even sustain itself in the face of a high dollar and blame-Canada sentiments in the U.S., plus the indifference of the Ontario government and the well-meaning but unbalanced policies of federal agencies?

It’s hard to imagine that Greg Sorbara won’t soon cave in to mounting pressure to improve Ontario’s tax credits. And it may be moot if the Canadian dollar doesn’t drift back to a sub-US$0.80 level. If these key factors improve by spring, then we should see some recovery.

But much more needs to be done to protect our role in a quickly changing entertainment industry. For one thing, both federal and provincial governments need to pick up a glove and get in the game. Instead of sending more mouths to suck from the same dry teat, they need to get together with industry leaders to develop strategies and initiatives that will increase Canada’s overall competitiveness.

Labor and industry need to do their parts, too. They can’t whine about things not being the way they were. Nor can they simply look for government handouts. Instead, they need to look at new ways to add value to the services they offer. To become a world leader, there has to be some kind of a revelation or breakthrough in our approach to servicing an old industry.

There wasn’t a breakthrough on Nov. 26. Maybe in two weeks.