Foreign production has gone flat in Montreal this summer, having hit what appears to be not one, but two roadblocks put up by the APFTQ.

Hollywood has balked at shooting in la belle province, say sources, because of the $14,000 entry fee put up by the Quebec producers association and to protest its ongoing efforts to represent U.S. film and TV shoots.

The long-running turf war reached a new stage late last month as Hollywood moved to block an application before Quebec’s labor tribunal that, if approved, would hand exclusive bargaining rights for all film and TV shoots in the province to the APFTQ.

Slow summer in Montreal

The dispute ‘is a preoccupation for everyone working in Montreal,’ says Fortner Anderson, business agent for the Directors Guild of Canada’s district council in Quebec.

The standoff has made for a very slow summer in Montreal, which has hosted only a handful of service shoots this year, while Toronto and Vancouver, bouncing back from last year’s Canada-wide slump, are bursting at the seams.

The few studio projects in Montreal so far this year include Lucky Number Slevin, which shot during the winter with Bruce Willis and Josh Hartnett, and The Last Kiss starring Zach Braff. Vincent Perez is also currently directing David Duchovny and Lili Taylor in The Secret.

Montreal is used to hosting at least one would-be blockbuster per year – something on par with The Sum of All Fears, The Day After Tomorrow or The Aviator. This year’s pictures are more modest.

Toronto and Vancouver, meanwhile, are hosting the new X-Men, the Michael Douglas thriller The Sentinel, the videogame adaptations Dungeon Siege and Silent Hill, and the cop story 16 Blocks, again with Willis.

Montreal studio operator Michel Trudel of Mel’s Cité du Cinéma insists that the major studios simply went elsewhere on creative grounds.

‘They found the location they needed in another city,’ he says.

But privately, studio and producer reps insist that Hollywood wants to stop the APFTQ from taking control of production rates in Quebec. They fear the APFTQ wants to stop the major studios from paying higher fees for experienced actors and technical crews – fees that local producers feel hard-pressed to match.

‘The studios love Montreal. But they’re upset and they want to make a point that they want to control their own house,’ says one Toronto-based production executive.

Quebec’s labor tribunal, the Commission de reconnaissance des associations d’artistes et des associations de producteurs, is considering the APFTQ’s application. Quebec is alone among the provinces in having laws that grant collective bargaining rights to self-employed artists, and the CRAAAP has jurisdiction over workplace rates and conditions for provincial film workers.

The Alliance of Motion Picture Television Producers, which represents U.S. studios, was recently to appear before the CRAAAP tribunal to oppose the APFTQ’s application, but that hearing has now been postponed to late-November.

The U.S. studios intend to tell the status tribunal they want the right to bargain directly with local actors and technical crews, and not be forced to rely on the APFTQ.

In 2003, the AMPTP threatened to boycott Quebec if the APFTQ succeeded in its bid. Don Cott, VP of the group’s Canadian affiliate, insists that the current slump is not part of a boycott.

‘There are productions headed to Montreal, just not at past volumes,’ he says.

There was $399-million worth of foreign film and TV location shooting in Quebec from April 1, 2002 to March 31, 2003, according to the CFTPA. That number shrunk by more than half in the following year.

ACTRA is also opposing the bid on the grounds that jobs are being lost because major studios are apparently shunning Montreal, and because the APFTQ is encroaching on the performers unions’ jurisdictional rights.

‘The producers asking for a status that the law provides for is a possibility. But the producers also have a responsibility not to chase away production and not to harm the industry,’ says Gary Saxe, a national organizer for ACTRA, based in Montreal.

But APFTQ spokeswoman Céline Pelletier says the application conforms with current Quebec laws protecting local artists that everyone, Canadians and Americans alike, must respect.

‘[Major studios] might like more choice and control in working with artists. But that’s not the way it works here,’ she says, noting that the laws in Quebec differ from the rest of Canada.

Pelletier also defended the APFTQ’s $14,000 preproduction fee, another sore point, noting that foreign producers can receive a $2,000 rebate if they opt to contribute $12,000 to a government-certified training program for local technicians.

She adds that the majors would see no big changes if CRAAAP certifies the APFTQ because most U.S. producers shooting in the province already operate under collective agreements negotiated by the Quebec producers association.

So what are Montreal’s prospects?

The DGC’s Anderson sees the launch in June of the Quebec Film and Television Council, with a mandate to keep Hollywood business around, as a sign that the province’s production sector is, at long last, serious about ending the studio-APFTQ dispute.

‘It’s all about creating climates of stability and certainty and collaboration, and this problem doesn’t contribute to any of those,’ he says.

Service producer Michael Prupas, president of Montreal’s Muse Entertainment, also points out that the APFTQ recently agreed that major studios could negotiate directly with members of AQTIS, the Quebec technicians union – another positive step forward.

Direct negotiations with technicians was a key concern for the major studios when Prupas unsuccessfully attempted to broker a peace deal between the AMPTP and the APFTQ last year.

But there is still a cloud hanging over the city. Veteran producer Don Carmody, a Montreal native, says he and U.S. studios that employ him continue to find the city’s production climate frustrating.

‘You have to know what you’re getting into, and what really annoys a lot of American producers is they don’t like having the floor shift on them,’ he says.

With files from Mark Dillon