Garry Toth
-Canada Television and Cable Production Fund, LFP executive director (June 1997-1998)
-CTF LFP executive director, 1998-April 2001
-CTF president and CEO (April 2001-June 2002)

Toth recalls reading articles saying he had been paid off to leave the CTF. But the man named the organization’s first CEO explains that he contracted viral encephalitis – on the plane back from MIPCOM, doctors believe – which continues to prevent him from working.

After taking time off in 2001 to recuperate, he returned briefly to the CTF in 2002, but a relapse led to the board naming Louise Baillargeon interim CEO, until Sandra Macdonald was hired as permanent replacement.

‘We went through challenge after challenge,’ Toth recalls – most notably dealing with producers having to physically line up for a limited kitty of LFP funding, as well as office expansion and ‘defaulting companies.’

Allegations of tax fraud and financial irregularities in 2000 against Cinar rocked the industry and led to the CTF suspending dealings with the Montreal-based animation prodco, which was subsequently acquired and rebranded as Cookie Jar Entertainment.

There was also the difficult task of balancing the objectives of the privately supported CTF Licence Fee Program with the needs of Telefilm Canada’s Equity Investment Program.

In April 1998, Toth and the CTF board were forced to secure $20 million in financing from the Royal Bank to save Canada’s top indigenous TV dramas. Canadian producers of 238 industrial TV series made with U.S. or other foreign partners had applied for and dried up the LFP money in one day. Producers of homegrown shows including Traders, Black Harbour and Cold Squad could not apply at the same time because Telefilm had not supplied them with letters of commitment for the equity financing needed to tap into the LFP.

Amid the backlash, new guidelines rewarding ‘visibly Canadian’ drama series were introduced in December 1999.

‘The demand for the CTF grew rapidly and far exceeded the funding – a system had to be put in place to deal fairly with how the money was dealt out. It couldn’t be first-come, first-served anymore,’ Toth notes.

Under Toth’s reign, the Toronto-based CTF office expanded from about 20 staff to around 70, and an office was opened in Montreal. (It recently closed.) And the regional VP positions created in March 2002 to strengthen dialogue with industry partners throughout the country were axed just months after they were announced, leaving hires Berni Wood, Carole Vivier and Susan Brinton in the lurch.

‘For the most part, I think we handled the challenges quite well, and the Canadian production industry as a whole benefited,’ Toth says.

Richard Stursberg
-CTF chair (June 1998-December 2001)
-Currently executive VP, CBC Television

CBC TV head Richard Stursberg is speaking over the phone from home, and there’s a lot of banging going on in the background. A large picture is being hung as he recalls his days as CTF chair. Stursberg has never been afraid to make noise.

Last year at the Banff World Television Festival, he urged the government to reinstate the 50% level of CTF monies set aside for the pubcaster, after then-Canadian heritage minister Liza Frulla announced it would remain at the historic average of 37%.

Stursberg also ruffled feathers at Banff back in 2000 when, as CTF chair, he proposed the fund be transformed into a market-oriented organization under a CTF-type board.

Ideally, he noted, the CTF should be a Crown corporation or quasi-government agency controlled by administrators who knew how to maximize audiences for Canadian-made primetime TV shows and how to funnel money into emerging new media. He suggested that Telefilm be relegated only to supporting Canadian films.

Around that time, two reports – one by KPMG and the other by public administration consultants François Colbert and David Silcox – recommended one board and one administration replace the ‘ticking time bomb’ double administration.

‘We had to make a shift in those days from an emphasis on how [many programming hours we were financing] to making television that people wanted to watch,’ Stursberg says. ‘Did we get as far as we might have liked to? No. It is still very difficult to get large audiences for English-Canadian shows.’

He continues to believe that ‘if you want to connect with Canadians, you have to make distinctly Canadian programming that is directed at them.’

Sandra Macdonald
-CTF president and CEO (August 2002-September 2005)
-Currently retired

Sandra Macdonald utters a recurrent theme among CTF movers and shakers, saying, ‘Everything about the CTF was a challenge.’

‘The biggest thing accomplished was getting to the point of having one application and one decision for projects, rather than having to go to both the LFP and the EIP,’ she says. The consolidation was in place for all programming genres from 2004/05 onward.

‘It took a great deal of time to get decisions made because of the structure [of two boards and administrations],’ she adds.

Macdonald worked with former CTF chair Richard Stursberg, by then Telefilm Canada’s executive director, to harmonize the administration of the two programs.

In 2002, the ‘visibly Canadian’ funding criteria for projects were dropped, eliminating the need for a shot-by-shot examination of programs. But the goal of distinctively Canadian drama shot and set in Canada with 10 out of 10 CAVCO points remained, with a few exceptions.

Broadcaster performance envelopes and tracking audience data were also initiated under Macdonald.

‘Broadcaster performance envelopes made the relationship with the producer more business-like, and are more likely to produce audience results,’ she notes.

Macdonald faced a major crisis in 2003 when then-federal finance minister John Manley announced that, over the next two years, the government was cutting $50 million from its annual $100-million CTF contribution. The CTF then borrowed $12.5 million from the already-diminished 2004 allotment to greenlight a number of 2003 applications.

Then, in 2004, a jittery production industry breathed a sigh of relief when new finance minister Ralph Goodale restored the feds’ $100-million contribution.

Douglas Barrett
-CTF chair (August 2004-present)
-Also president and CEO of PS Production Services and partner at McMillan Binch Mendelsohn LLP

A new CTF era emerged under Barrett, with Telefilm Canada now administering both the LFP and the EIP, and the CTF board controlling overall direction. This setup was dictated by then-Canadian heritage minister Liza Frulla in June 2005 amid complaints that the system in place was too complex.

As a result of the structural change, the CTF’s office in Montreal closed and several staff were laid off in Toronto.

‘I think that the changes have gone remarkably well – almost seamlessly,’ Barrett says.

He adds that the CTF is a unique institution, and that all the stakeholders have worked collaboratively to deal with any problems.

‘We have had to be brave enough to make up our own solutions and forge our own path,’ he says. ‘All the things we did, we invented. We didn’t pull the envelope system off the shelf from another country.’

Despite the welcome move to one administration, several issues remain. There is an ongoing dispute over whether Vancouver should benefit from regional bonuses – something denied to Toronto and Montreal. And there is a call for the CTF to foster a faster transition to HD production.

‘We would welcome the ability to support HD more than we are, but if we did do that with the resources we have, we might produce fewer hours of programming,’ Barrett says. ‘We have a finite amount of money each year. But if we didn’t add more money for the producers to support HD, then the producers would be cost-constrained and we wouldn’t get high-quality programming.’

Barrett notes that the CTF board will be holding a strategic planning session in January, including an examination of the envelope system, with new policies possible for April 2008.