Vancouver: It’s not meant to be a horror show, but the annual federal production funding results seem for many producers to be getting scarier each year – with the ultimate fright that that money may vanish altogether.

Take for instance the recent 2002 Equity Investment Program results from Telefilm Canada – disappointing more producers this year despite a $20-million bonus shifted from the Canadian Television Fund’s Licence Fee Program. While many fledgling or unproven proposals won’t get EIP or LFP this time, programs that had made the cut in years past – Paradise Falls (Breakthrough) or Jinnah On Crime (Force Four), for example – are also out of luck today.

The reality is that, while federal production funding is critical to most Canadian production, the funds are finite while the market grows, spurred in large part by the growth of the broadcaster market and regulatory requirement to invest in indigenous programming. Advertising revenues at domestic and international broadcasters aren’t sufficient to pay for the bulk of commissioned programming.

Consequently, increasing numbers of producers are already being forced to cobble together funding from other sources; for some, alternative financing is the difference between being in the production business or not.

When asked what might happen if Ottawa either chopped or put on hold production subsidies, the responses were consistent: Catastrophic. Disastrous. Chaotic.

But what would producers do?

‘I’d open up a jam stand,’ jokes Newfoundland-based documentary filmmaker Barbara Doran. ‘I’ve been preparing for this moment. The writing has been on the wall, I think, and as a producer, I’ve learned how to plan. I’ve already gone out and picked the berries…I know I’ll have security and I’ll probably make as much money as I have doing this.’

‘I think if there was a moratorium or something radical [imposed] on public funding, there would be an immediate collapse of programming,’ says Chris Haddock, Vancouver producer of Da Vinci’s Inquest. ‘I would have to go to where I go on some of my [international] projects – all my stuff is not funded by the Canadian public funding system. I have a lot of interests and development deals south of the border. That is just working within the American system, which is all private. They have the volume and they have the system that can sustain that [volume].’

‘Forget it,’ says Toronto producer Ken Finkleman. ‘I’m gone. There’s no other game in town for me. I wouldn’t have anything to do. I’d quit; stop working. Possibly, I’d go out and try to make a movie or something….People in government don’t understand the unbelievable importance of such things. They’re embarrassed by these [funding] organizations. They kind of want to push them aside – [but] it’s like laying roads; it’s like providing schools. It’s nurturing culture.’

According to a CFTPA-commissioned PricewaterhouseCoopers assessment of the Canadian Television Fund from August 2001, the loss of the CTF would mean a decrease of $456 million to $578 million in Canadian production expenditures. On the employment side, 12,000 to 15,300 jobs would disappear along with 1,600 to 2,000 hours of Canadian television programming. To maintain current levels of Canadian production, reliance on foreign financing markets would double, a prospect deemed highly unlikely.

Ottawa-based broadcast consultant Peter Fleming says the Canadian system would fundamentally change. Broadcasters and producers would resort to ‘cheap and dirty’ programming and increased repeats, while there would be increased pressure on the CRTC to lower Canadian content rules. Cost control would likely mean the end of high-end Canadian drama, and the cost of clearing rights would undermine Canadian documentary. Low-cost reality shows would become a production staple. And there is no reasonable expectation that broadcasters would be able to up their licence fees.

International coproductions would increase, says Fleming, but it would be at the expense of the programming that is distinctively Canadian and therefore less internationally appealing. U.S. presales would become a priority, a move that would also ‘de-Canadianize’ shows in the style of one-time domestic series Night Heat, where Canadians pretended to be Americans.

Foreign service production and commercial production would become key to maintaining employment. Companies such as Alliance Atlantis Communications that have to appease shareholders, would also focus on more non-Canadian content. Consolidation of smaller companies would be inevitable, says Fleming, and the talent that can make production happen will flee to markets where they can work.

And compared to the current environment where Credo Entertainment, Cochrane Entertainment and Sextant Entertainment can run into business trouble, a post-CTF industry would see many more production company collapses.

‘It’s a terrifying thought,’ says independent producer Paul de Silva. ‘Virtually all the production outside of what’s done in-house at the CBC and other networks that have in-house production facilities – which are mainly for news and lifestyle programming – is done with public financing. Everyone in the business realizes that this is the cost for Canadian culture. Unfortunately, the real problem is that we don’t have a market-driven economy in Canada. We just don’t have the population to maintain the kind of level of cultural consciousness that we all feel is important.’

Says producer and Banff Television Foundation chief Pat Ferns: ‘I think producers are pretty resourceful people. If [a funding moratorium] were to happen, I don’t think they would all curl up and die. It would depend on whether our protections under NAFTA were still in effect; whether there was still regulation under the CRTC. The great thing about the Canadian system is it’s using a lot of different instruments to achieve a lot of different goals. It would be a crazy policy to adopt, but I think change is likely to happen and producers have to gear themselves up for that.’

In an April 4 speech to the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University in Ottawa, Toronto producer Lazslo Barna posed this question regarding a post-CTF industry: ‘How likely then is this doomsday scenario? Certainly the signs are there that the minister of finance is under a lot of pressure to abandon the Canadian Television Fund. The government used to make their commitment for three years at a time – now that commitment is renewed annually. Rumor has it that the cuts may happen as early as next year; cuts when the subsidy system is oversubscribed 2-1.

‘One of the key objectives of the funds and the regulators has been to ensure that not all programming is produced out of only Toronto and Montreal. This policy has been so effective that there are now crews, writers and producers in every corner of the country.

‘Without a doubt, one of the first casualties of the cutbacks would be the regions, collapsing a decade of successful decentralization of film and television in this country. To reinforce this point, it’s important to note that while only 38% of production is CTF backed in Ontario, in Atlantic Canada 93% of all production is made with CTF involvement. The technical community would also be devastated and ever more at the mercy of the American service industry. A growth industry would have been deliberately shattered.’

Playback wants your ideas on the subject of federal production funding. What would you do as a producer or industry executive if you could no longer access LFP or EIP? What can we do to preserve the domestic industry in that case? How can we change the current system to make it fairer? We’ll publish the best ideas.