Arthur Lewis is executive director of Our Public Airwaves, an advocacy group for public broadcasting.

What’s with all the cheering over restoration of federal funding for the Canadian Television Fund to $100 million?

When your wallet is stolen, it’s natural to feel grateful about getting it back, but the current outpouring of gratitude to the Liberals is a bit like thanking the pickpocket when he sheepishly returns your wallet after he gets caught.

Instead of applauding the Martin government, we should be putting their feet to the fire over the inadequacy of federal support for Canadian program production.

Let’s not forget that two years ago, when Charles Dalfen of the CRTC and ACTRA’s Paul Gross started sounding the alarm about the crisis in Canadian drama, the CTF was overall spending more than usual because it had reserves it could call on, but even that came nowhere close to meeting the need.

Unfortunately, when former finance minister John Manley cut the fund last year, too many people in the industry went into panic mode and started begging the Liberals to reverse the cut. While that was an understandable response to a real emergency, it could hardly be described as heavy-duty strategic thinking. And while Manley’s motivation may have been to embarrass Sheila Copps during the Liberal leadership race, the end result was a huge political favor for Paul Martin.

Industry associations pleaded for the money to be put back and our new prime minister delivered. End of story. What are the chances that either Prime Minister Martin or Finance Minister Ralph Goodale have any appreciation of the fact that the crisis continues? And having delivered what the industry asked for, what are the chances they’ll even consider an increase for CTF – particularly when all they’re hearing right now is a lot of cheering and applause.

So what happens now to the Department of Canadian Heritage committee recommendation for a CTF increase? Is there any realistic prospect that it will resurface on the government’s agenda? Not very likely.

Let’s look at this from the perspective of new Heritage Minister Helene Chalifour Scherrer. Arriving in office with little knowledge of the file, she’s told the industry is appealing for restoration of CTF to $100 million. She puts it at the top of her agenda and the government delivers – $100 million for two years. Again, case closed.

Well, not quite, because now the minister wants to move the focus away from government funding and on to discussions of other ways to finance CTF. Nice try, but we shouldn’t be buying it, or at least not to the extent that the feds see it as a way of ending their financial support. But if they want to talk about ways to get the private sector to pony up more money for Canadian programming while redirecting public funds back to the CBC where they belong – well, that’s a different story.

More is required

There’s no question that more is required than simply an increase in federal funding. Broadcasters – and particularly our highly profitable private broadcasters – are getting off far too lightly when it comes to licence fees. The CRTC has to come up with a better television policy that forces those broadcasters to spend more on priority Canadian programming, particularly drama. But both Heritage and the CRTC have been tweaking the rules for a long time now and all it seems to have done is make the situation worse. If we allow the focus to shift entirely to those discussions about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, we let the government off the hook.

The bottom line is still money. Government money. More of it, primarily for the CBC, so that it can commission the independent production sector to deliver more of the primetime Canadian drama and entertainment programming that we so badly need.

A lot of informed advice has been offered in recent years about the necessity of appealing to governments on the basis of the economic importance of the industry in terms of jobs and exports. We all know the figures. I don’t want to make light of those arguments because they are obviously important, but demonstrably they haven’t worked. Or, at least, they haven’t worked nearly well enough.

When they have worked, to a large extent, they have produced government policies that encourage industrial TV and film production – service production for American and other foreign programming, as well as that generic stuff where the police uniforms, the flags and the mailboxes are all American.

This is a cultural industry and we need to start flying that flag a little more often.

We need to be a lot more aggressive about demanding more government support for the production of Canadian programming.

We all know that quality Canadian programming – drama in particular – is never going to be possible without public subsidy, but I’m not so sure that people in the government, beyond Heritage, really understand that. I’m not sure that the average MP or senator really understands the economics of program production.

In fact, I strongly suspect that many of them actually believe that the only reason Canadian programming is a money-losing proposition is because we’re not very good at making it. That’s reflected in the fact that government initiatives, such as the CTF, are always short-term rather than permanent government programs. They’re designed to help the industry get on its feet, with the naive expectation that in a couple of years it will be able to stand on its own. The latest CTF commitment of $100 million for two years is a prime example.

It’s time to change that thinking. We have to help people in government to better understand the economics of Canadian TV. We have to help them understand that there are no short-term supports that can be yanked away when the baby starts walking on his own.

We have to make that case forcefully, and we have to stop being so darn grateful for so very little.

-www.publicairwaves.ca