Anglophone producers in Quebec have joined forces to create the English Language Film and Television Council of Quebec. In addition to identifying common challenges Quebec’s English producers face, one of the council’s key objectives will be to gain recognition for them as an official language minority community, making them eligible for federal funding that is usually reserved for francophones living outside Quebec.

‘There is an assumption that there is a lot of anglophone production in Quebec and that anglophone producers in Quebec are doing really well,’ says Kirwan Cox, doumentary producer, research consultant and the council’s executive director. ‘That’s a bit of a myth.’

The council, chaired by Montreal-based Park Ex Pictures’ Kevin Tierney, officially launched on Oct. 16 and is comprised of industry groups including the CFTPA and APFTQ producers associations, the Documentary Organization of Canada, Directors Guild of Canada, Filmmakers’ Association of Visible and Ethnic Minorities, Anglophone Producers Outside Montreal and ACTRA. Other board members include producer Arnie Gelbart, representing the CFTPA; Claire Samson and Celine Pelletier (APFTQ); Anne Henderson and Dan Cross (DOC); Fortner Anderson (DGC, Quebec); Raymond Guardia (ACTRA, Quebec); Maureen Hill (FAVEM); and Nicholas Kinsey, representing production outside Montreal.

Cox says the Department of Canadian Heritage’s Interdepartmental Partnership with Official Language Communities, an initiative that has been supporting francophone communities outside Quebec since 1999, should also apply to anglophone producers in Quebec.

IPOLC policy applies to official-language minority groups and is a joint initiative in which Heritage contributes as much as 50% of development strategies put forth by other federal institutions. For example, an existing IPOLC agreement with the Canada Council for the Arts helps to provide funding for anglophone visual artists living in Quebec. Cox says he hopes a similar agreement can be established with Telefilm Canada to aid anglophone producers living in Quebec.

‘There is an imbalance,’ says Cox. ‘IPOLC has existed for five years, but [with respect to film and television] has not applied to anglophones in Quebec.’

Solange Bourgoin, a special advisor for cultural industries at Heritage, says that one major issue facing anglophone producers in Quebec is their distance from major English-language broadcasters, most of which are headquartered in Toronto.

‘Being in Quebec, there is certainly a type of isolation between the producers and decision makers,’ she says. This is something an IPOLC agreement with Telefilm could help to alleviate.

Being isolated from Toronto decision makers became an issue for Pepita Ferrari of Montreal-based arts and history documentary prodco Films Piche Ferrari, when, after committing development funds, W Network pulled out of its deal to air Ferrari’s doc The Unsexing of Emma Edmonds.

‘I was suddenly left with no broadcaster,’ says Ferrari. ‘In that position, I would have definitely had an advantage had I been in Toronto, where I could quickly set up a bunch of meetings. As it was, it took me much longer because I was [in Montreal].’ In the end, History Television rescued the documentary and it aired in March.

The overall budget for the IPOLC initiative is unclear at the moment, as cultural ministries across the board are being re-evaluated. However, Bourgoin says, anglophone cultural communities in Quebec ‘need to have a much stronger, much more organized voice to enable a clearer picture of the issues.’ This is the main objective of the upcoming Quebec Arts Summit, which runs Nov. 25-27 in Montreal.

Fifteen to 20 representatives of the film and television industry will attend the summit, which is sponsored by Heritage, Telefilm and the Canada Council for the Arts. At Telefilm roundtables, delegates from the newly formed council will discuss the position of anglophone producers in Quebec and make recommendations about how to improve their situation.

Another important issue is recognizing the distinction between anglophone producers and francophone producers who are working on English-language productions.

‘There is a lot of confusion about what it means to be an English-language producer,’ says Guy Rogers, the summit’s honorary chairperson. ‘The official statistics coming out of Telefilm, which indicate that [English-language producers] are already getting lots of money, is misleading, because a lot of that money for English-language production is not going to English-language producers,’ he says, but rather to francophone producers doing English-language productions.

According to Ferrari, competition among Quebec producers for English broadcast windows is increasing as more francophone producers move into the anglo market.

‘[Anglophone producers] are suffering from the same general malaise that’s apparent across the industry,’ she says. ‘Our situation is compounded by the fact that we are a minority in a province that is rightfully going to support its indigenous French community first… On an operational level, many of our companies are really in dire straits just trying to keep their doors open.’

When Cox and Tierney arrive at the summit, they will come armed with a new study conducted by Cox that uses Canadian Television Fund data from 2001/02 and 2002/03 to examine the reality of anglophone producers in Quebec.

According to this data, English-language production in Quebec has declined 15% over the period, from $79 million to $67 million, representing a 63% drop in feature films and a 50% decline in documentaries.