Something struck me about Telefilm chair Michel Roy’s recent comments in Halifax.

It’s not that Telefilm is backing away from its 5% target – that long-held hope that one day, if we’re really good and eat all our vegetables, Canadian films will make up 5% of domestic box office. Just maybe, if we wish hard enough.

I’ve never liked the 5% notion. It’s defeatist. It’s the box office manifestation of our Canadian inferiority complex: One day, we’ll be nearly as good as America. One day they’ll notice us. One day they’ll think we’re worth something.

Screw that.

My problem with the 5% target is that all it served to do was quantify our defeat. It put a lackluster number to our aspirations and made us look amateur when we failed to live up to it.

Roy went on to sum: “Unfortunately, and inexplicably, a large segment of Canada’s moviegoers have yet to recognize [that Canadian films are worth dropping money on], and one of our challenges is now to make them aware of the excellence of Canadian cinema.”

He mentioned production dollars and marketing, so let’s examine those.

Canada is undergoing a visual renaissance, and although it began a few years back it was very apparent at TIFF this year.

Just two cases in point: The Bang Bang Club (approximate budget $6 million) and Casino Jack (about $12.5 million).

Both of those were outstanding, entertaining films. Bang Bang especially blew me away (if you pardon the pun). It was easily one of the best films I’ve seen in the past five years.

So, the production end of the equation seems to be working fine, thanks very much. We’ve got the content side covered. Canadians are telling fantastic stories (i.e. just ‘stories’, not ‘Canadian stories’, but that’s another editorial…) that will resonate with mainstream audiences at home and around the world.

So… marketing?

P&A down south for the average major release is in the $40 million range. (You can argue the relative sanity of that number but, again, that’s another editorial.) Going by the rule of tenths – Canada’s population being about 10% of our American neighbors – that should put the average (average, mind you) price tag on a major Canadian release at about $4 million in P&A.

Want to hazard a guess how many Canadian films get $4 million in P&A strictly for the domestic end of their release?

It’s not all that unfortunate or inexplicable, really. It’s about creating brand awareness for Canadian creative, and that costs money. Canadian consumers are no different than their foreign counterparts – they have to be convinced of the value of a product before they invest. (By the way, if you don’t like the way I phrased that, you’re part of the problem.)

Now, before every filmmaker starts making sidelong glances at their distributor, it should be obvious that any Canadian distributor who starts dropping $4 million on the average wide release right now is going to soon find themselves the next employee of the month at Blockbuster.

But it’s the prototypical Catch-22: Canadian films aren’t going to make money at box office until we spend large on marketing, and there is no way to spend large on marketing until Canadian films start performing better at box office.

Telefilm does its level best to help. (In no way is this a dig at Telefilm; you work with what you get.) It offers marketing support, as do a few other sources, but the last time I checked the ‘distribution and marketing assistance’ line of the 2009 Canadian Feature Film Fund annual report, it was about $11 million.

I’m no math expert, but I’m pretty sure $4 million doesn’t go into $11 million that many times.

Now, imagine the impact of a $50 million marketing program…

Canadian films will start performing well at box office when P&A is relative. Even relatively relative. You can mandate quotas and targets, you can enforce regulations, you can hold your breath until you turn blue, but until all films are treated equally in the marketplace, a Canadian release will continue to feel like a shot at Crown and Anchor in Vegas.

Once Canadian films exist in the same marketing continuum as their American counterparts, when Canadian movie-goers are given the chance to compare content and make purchasing decisions based solely on the merit of the creative as they see it, Canadian films will begin to hit the $10 million mark at box office far more often. A few will go higher – and broadcast, DVD, L&M and other revenues will grow in relation.

I’ll freely admit that it’s easy for me to sit here and pontificate about million-dollar marketing budgets. And certainly not every film needs or deserves a $4 million P&A spend. (Honestly, as it stands now, there are probably only about a dozen viable candidates produced in Canada every year that can play at that level.) And, it’s going to take time to change established perceptions in the marketplace.

But I don’t think we’re going to find any solutions until we stop blaming Canadian consumers for what is really a problem within our industry.