The Canadian Television Fund is promising ‘maximum transparency’ to stakeholders in its latest report, which released the results of its 2006/07 fiscal year on Tuesday, following the board’s annual general meeting at the Banff World Television Festival.

‘We have expanded the breadth of our reporting and welcome the opportunity to provide the industry with meaningful and detailed information,’ said board chair Douglas Barrett in a release.

According to the report, CTF revenues for 2006/07 totaled $273.5 million, while 509 projects — with total production budgets equaling $880 million — received cash from the funder. Programs that received subsidies include 57 English- and 32 French-language dramas, 165 English- and 119 French-language documentaries, and other variety, children’s and performing arts shows. Overall, that translates to 2,297 hours of new Canadian programming.

Meanwhile, the board says it will hold off on proposed bylaw amendments — designed to formalize current CTF administrative practices — until a CRTC task force completes its review of the CTF.

The fund came under criticism yet again last week from Shaw Communications boss Jim Shaw, who, in a letter to Barrett, accused the board of trying to ‘tighten its internal focus’ by voting in a series of bylaws at the Banff meeting without input from the cable and satellite industries. Shaw removed its representative from the CTF board when it temporarily stopped making its monthly payments to the fund late last year.

One of the amendments the CTF was looking to formalize is its double-majority practice, in which a member of the board who could potentially benefit from a vote at the fund withdraws, allowing other members to vote on the same issue during a second round.

In the stakeholders report, Barrett indicates the CTF will continue to use this practice for all board decisions to ‘ensure independent oversight of our work.’

Among CTF’s priorities for 2007/08 is the refining of its Broadcaster Performance Envelope allocation process, including proposed talks on the approach to measuring audiences.

‘We will also continue with important policy work including the second phase of our guidelines review… and a discussion on the funding of content intended for new platforms,’ said CTF president Valerie Creighton.

Meanwhile, the CTF elected four new members to its board, including Dale Taylor, nominated by the Department of Canadian Heritage, Dean MacDonald and Alison Clayton, nom’d by the Canadian Cable Telecommunications Association, and Serge Bellerose, from the Canadian Association of Broadcasters.