Like the Motion Picture Association of America in the U.S., full and open access to markets lies at the heart of the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association credo.

‘The more you allow the marketplace to dictate business decisions, the better it is for all the players in the market,’ says CMPDA president, the Hon. Douglas Frith.

The Toronto-based CMPDA represents the interests of the major Hollywood studios, including Buena Vista (Disney), Columbia TriStar (Sony), MGM, Paramount (Viacom), Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Studios and Warner Bros. ‘Essentially it is to ensure the investment climate and legislative environment are conducive to good business practices,’ Frith explains.

While the majors earn the lion’s share of revenues at the Canadian box office and in the home-video and DVD market, Frith points out that the studios and their broadcast affiliates are the single most important source of production financing in Canada, making up about 55% of all production. ‘Without that kind of involvement [‘north of $1 billion annually’], the infrastructure that has been built up as a result of foreign investment couldn’t sustain itself just on indigenous production,’ he says.

CMPDA member companies also invest in P&A campaigns, and some are committed to dubbing their films into French using Quebec performers and sound studios.

On the production side, the CMPDA works in association with the CFTPA, individual service producers, the Directors Guild of Canada and various unions to ensure production levels are maintained, or increased. The association played a key role in promoting an enhanced production services tax credit in the last federal budget, and is active in promoting similar action on the provincial level.

The CMPDA has filed interventions and submissions on several key policy and legislative issues, including Internet retransmission, signal theft and copyright issues. Frith is a keynote speaker at the MPTAC ShowCanada trade show (Ottawa, April 30 to May 4), of which the CMPDA is an active supporter.

‘One of the key reasons we got involved, even though we’re not there yet, is the creation of a national [theatrical] classification system,’ Frith says. Currently, provincial classification boards determine movie ratings.