MONTREAL — The National Film Board says only about six people, rather than the previously reported 22, will be laid off in the current round of cuts.

With a fixed budget and increasing expenses, the NFB said this week it had to shave off $2.6 million in costs by cutting 22 full-time positions.

But NFB spokesperson Nathalie Courville says that while those jobs are gone on paper, some of them were vacant anyway. The director general of marketing and communications also says new opportunities will open up. ‘I just spoke to Human Resources and they say that many people will be offered new positions. At the most, only about six people will be let go. This is an internal budgetary exercise — that’s why we didn’t make an official announcement.’

Two jobs that will be eliminated are those of Paul Cowan, who directed Westray, a documentary about the Nova Scotia mine disaster, and Beverly Shaffer, who won an Academy Award for her 1978 look at a disabled girl, I’ll Find a Way. The pair were the last in-house filmmakers at the NFB.

Courville says the cuts are necessary because the NFB’s operating budget of $70 million hasn’t increased since 1995 and the institution needs to spend more money to adapt to the digital age. ‘Our mandate is to make our films available. Before, we used to make things for TV, but now our films have to be on the web. It’s an obligation we have — to make our films accessible.’

The bulk of the layoffs are in Montreal, where the NFB has its headquarters.

NFB chair Tom Perlmutter has released a five-year strategic plan that asks the film board to, among other objectives, engage more emerging filmmakers and implement an ambitious digital program.

Among the digitization projects is a new area of the NFB website that makes footage available — for a fee — to other filmmakers.