A guest editorial from Brian Anthony, national executive director and CEO, Directors Guild of Canada.

L.P. Hartley wrote that the past is a foreign country; that they do things differently there, and 10 years ago we certainly did things differently.

In that country of our relatively recent past, the Canadian dollar was weak, and some Cassandras prophesied that it would plummet past the rising Mexican peso on its way down to new and unfathomable 50-cent depths. Our system of federal and provincial tax credits was robust and relatively unrivaled. Technologies that are now taken for granted were still on the drawing board. They were simpler times, good times, and we could all be forgiven for thinking that they would continue to roll.

If the past is a foreign country, then so is the future, and we will do things differently 10 years from now. Indeed, we will have to do things differently then, for the changes and challenges that face us now will continue to proliferate in number and nature. The good old days are not going to return, despite the fervent belief of a faithful few, and we can only plan for what we hope will be good new days. Let us take a flying visit to the past before going back to the future.

In the decade beginning, when the millennium came and went amid the popping of millions of champagne corks, disquieting developments began to cast shadows over what seemed to be an eternally happy land of sunshine, lollipops and rainbows everywhere.

The year before, the CRTC had decided to free broadcasters from those damnably inconvenient Canadian programming expenditure requirements. Not surprisingly, domestic production took a huge lemming-like header, beginning what many have typified as a lost decade. The Commission also decided then that it would not regulate the internet for the time being, and, while that had no immediate impact on our industry, that decision had serious implications for its future. But more of that below.

More clouds began to accumulate as the decade ground on. Those sneaky and shameless Americans, unsatisfied with stealing so much of our industry talent – Mary Pickford may have been America’s Sweetheart, but she was a Toronto-born Canadian and died a proudly card-carrying Canadian – began stealing our tax credit ideas in order to stop so-called runaway productions from running away to the Great White North. These and other incentives offered by many states to the south began to have a negative impact on service production here, as did the dollar, which slowly clawed its way out of the cellar, dusted itself off and now stands, still blinking with surprise, on a more or less equal footing with its once-dominant US counterpart.

The cumulative effect of these factors was compounded late in the last decade when the global economy fell off a cliff, dealing a staggering blow to the US economy and inflicting collateral damage on service productions here.

Domestic production had its share of woes. While Canada weathered the international economic meltdown comparatively well, we still shared considerable pain. Television broadcasters felt the pinch of plummeting ad revenues, but continued to outspend each other in Hollywood, lavishing more and yet more scarce Canadian dollars on American programming. The Canadian Television Fund had a heart-stopping near-death experience, only to rise again, reborn as the Canada Media Fund. Vertical integration continued apace, leaving fewer and fewer doors for producers, directors and screenwriters to knock on. Canwest swallowed the Alliance Atlantis buffet, developed an expensive case of indigestion, and was in turn gobbled up by Shaw as the decade drew to a close. And the next decade will almost certainly begin with the completion of Bell’s acquisition of CTV.

With these and other factors at play, Canadian content looked more and more like an endangered species as 2010 loomed before us.

The industry, it seemed, experienced everything but the 10 plagues of ancient Egypt, and the end days seemed truly upon us for a while.

As we prepare to embark upon the next 10 years, it is worth taking stock of our environment. The dollar remains strong and shows no signs of taking a dive, so what was once a bargain basement incentive to service productions is gone for the foreseeable future. Quebec, Ontario and BC have injected more octane into their tax credit programs, but the federal tax credit regime has not kept pace with industry developments at the national level.

License renewal hearings for the private television broadcasters are just around the corner, with CBC/Radio-Canada to follow, and in that regard the good news is that the Commission has reinstated expenditure requirements for the private broadcasters, so if the last decade was thought of as a lost one, perhaps the next decade will be found. But it will take more than expenditure requirements – however welcome they are – to position the screen-based industry to face the challenges and changes that lie before us over the next decade.

We are now living in a multi-platform digital universe expanding at breathtaking speed, and that trend will continue to accelerate. In that regard, there are a few major issues on the table at the end of this decade which will have significant implications for the screen-based industry.

As mentioned above, at the beginning of the decade, the CRTC decided to refrain from regulating the internet as it was primarily a text-based medium. As we approach the end of the decade, the Federal Court of Appeal has decided that ISPs (and WSPs) do not engage in broadcasting – they simply “send” stuff to your laptop or handheld, presumably – and therefore are not subject to regulation by the Commission under the Broadcasting Act. We shall see if the Supreme Court wishes to make its views on the matter known.

As we enter the next decade, we hope to also see a modernized Copyright Act (our last one dates to 1997 – two years before Napster and four before the iPod) as well as the recognition of the important role of Canadian content and its creators within a larger national digital strategy for Canada.

While issues like these have yet to be resolved, there are two measures that could be readily put in place and would have a huge impact on production activity. If we are to be a full-time industry with a full-time work force and full-time output, we need to be recognized as a key component of the creative economy, the economy of the future, in the next federal budget. Currently being formulated, that budget should include two components vital to the future health of the screen-based industry: one, a significantly enhanced federal tax regime; and two, a powerful incentive to encourage much-need private investment in film, television and digital media production in Canada.

With those two powerful building blocks in place we might find ourselves 10 years hence living once more in a happy land of sunshine, lollipops and rainbows everywhere. Oh, all right, and puppies too. But first we need significantly enhanced federal tax credits and a private investment stimulus to propel us towards that promised land.