Toronto Mayor David Miller has stepped up to aid the city’s declining film and television industry with a proposal to streamline and bolster production by creating the Toronto Film Board, which he will head.

The proposal, tabled by Miller and accepted by Toronto’s Policy and Finance Committee Nov. 23, states Miller’s intention to renew and revitalize the city’s industry and to ‘send a clear message to the industry locally and internationally that Toronto is a premier national and global place to film.’

The decision was to be finalized when the proposal went before city council Nov. 30, the day after Playback went to press.

Once formed, the Film Board will focus on attracting production to the city and streamlining the current bureaucracy associated with lensing in Toronto.

‘Business is tough these days. The decline in production volumes has been substantial,’ says Cinespace Studios VP Steve Mirkopoulos. ‘Everything Mayor Miller is doing is a step in the right direction.’

Miller will chair a board composed of film executives and union members who will advise the city on film policy. Toronto has faced a series of challenges, starting with the SARS outbreak last year, the fallout from which some say the industry still has not really recovered.

Toronto now also faces the soaring loonie, the anti-runaway production lobby in the U.S., and increased competition from higher tax incentives in other provinces and south of the border.

Despite adverse conditions, Mirkopoulos reports two new productions currently in preproduction at Cinespace: the Paramount feature Four Brothers and Kojak, a TV series produced by U.S. prodco GEP Productions for USA Networks. But in general, he says, American producers remain edgy about shooting here because of uncertainty and the rising Canadian dollar.

In order to restore foreign production levels in the city, ‘you’d need a lower dollar or higher tax credits, which unfortunately the city has nothing to do with,’ says Mirkopoulos. ‘All levels of government have a role to play. The industry will do its part, and we want the provincial and federal governments to do their part.’

Leading up to this proposal, Miller criticized provincial and federal governments for their failure to address the issue of tax credits. His proposal calls for lobbying those governments to reverse incentives intended to lure productions to locations outside Toronto.

Susan Murdoch, VP of Toronto prodco Pebblehut Too, says she is hopeful that having Miller onside will give the Toronto industry more clout with the provincial and federal governments.

‘Because Mayor Miller understands the economic importance of the industry in Toronto, one of the biggest impacts he is going to have is as an advocate for the industry at other levels of government,’ she says. ‘It’s one thing for a group of industry people to go to the provincial or federal government with requests, but it’s another for the mayor of Toronto to walk in with you.’

Miller’s proposal will also create an interdepartmental working group on film and television to focus on streamlining the bureaucracy associated with lensing in Toronto.

According to the proposal, council and city departments ‘have become less flexible and welcoming in their approach to the industry.’ For example, securing locations has become increasingly difficult, and film permits are getting bumped in favor of other operations permits.

According to Murdoch, the new film board and working group will go a long way towards solving these day-to-day problems of shooting in Toronto, which she says have become increasingly worse since the amalgamation of the GTA.

However, she adds, ‘at the moment that’s not the key thing on our minds, because there’s certainly not the volume of production in town that was causing those problems in the first place.’

To this end, Miller will appoint a film advocate to act as a voice for the industry. Among the advocate’s first responsibilities will be establishing an action plan to ensure that federal and provincial governments and relevant agencies are aware of Toronto’s interests, and those of the industry at large.

Producer/director Nick Gray, president of Seventh Man Films in Toronto, says the creation of a film advocate is one of the mayor’s key recommendations.

The city, says Gray, ‘needs somebody with the power to elevate the industry from a department within economic development to its own department. You need somebody who is familiar enough with city policy to walk through all the bureaucratic red tape. Unfortunately, cities run off red tape, and in the production industry, you need to be able to cut through it to get things done.’