Vancouver: The toughest job in Canadian television is not the financing or storytelling or acting or marketing. According to Vancouver creative producer Chris Haddock, the real job is much more fundamental: being able to identify and nurture genuine talent. Get that straight and the rest will follow – especially if, through a staunch sense of independence, that talent can flourish unfettered by network or studio demands.

What sounds like utter luxury for Canadian drama producers is actually essential – from Haddock’s perspective – to the domestic and international success of the genre.

Case in point: Haddock’s coroner series Da Vinci’s Inquest, in prep for its fifth season, sold in 50 countries and was produced without CBC interference. Winner of bags of Leo and Gemini Awards, an audience favorite, a darling of the critics, a nominee at the upcoming Rockie Awards at Banff2002, and, as Haddock might say, a talent incubator.

‘I try to hire the best artists and keep them working,’ says Haddock. ‘That’s what series work allows me to do. I advance people through the ranks here. You have to ask, ‘Is this an artist who is going to grow or is this someone at the top of their game?’ Everyone thought I was a risk.’

Haddock, however, is one of the first to recognize Canada’s woefully limited success in encouraging risk and cultivating opportunity in TV production. His achievement in Canadian drama, he readily admits, has much to do with being in the right place at the right time and working hard to exploit a rare chance. So, despite his streak of nationalism, Haddock concedes the quickest route to a career in Canadian drama may be through Hollywood.

‘One of the difficulties in the [Canadian] indie scene is that we give film directors the opportunities to do million-dollar features,’ says Haddock. ‘Then it’s five, six, seven years before they get to do another. That’s just not a good training ground and then the films aren’t even getting distributed.

‘We’ve got to get a program where directors can work and learn more regularly. Put them through a good television series to learn the ropes, before you put them onto larger-scale, more difficult storytelling tasks.

‘There has not been enough investment in the creative producer in Canada,’ he explains. ‘People who have enough experience to make their mark in Canada have jumped to the States because they’ve seen better opportunities there. Like the old saying goes: ‘If you want to make cars, go to Detroit.’ If you want to see how the business works on one level, you go to L.A. Then decide. Do you love the mercantilism of L.A. or are you more of a craftsman? [If you pick the latter, it] means you have got to come back and lobby the country for support.’

That presupposes, however, that our creative refugees have something to return to: the Canadian drama series, according to the trends evident at the LFP and EIP, is a low priority.

‘I’ve called the death knell on Canadian drama before and seen it revive,’ says Haddock. ‘It’s cyclical. Suddenly, everybody is doing sitcoms and you can’t sell a drama. The next week, it’s all drama. In the U.S., we’ve seen CBS come out with five nights of drama [in the fall]. We’re at the bottom of the cycle, but it’s picking up.’

Which is why the Canadian move from series – the workhorses of the production sector – to MOWs seems counterintuitive, especially when the U.S. networks have cut their dependence on TV movies. (Haddock, it should be noted, is in prep with the CTV MOW Odd Squad, about drug cops in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.)

‘Of course, an MOW is less risky; it’s less money,’ he says. ‘It also lets [the broadcasters] look at a [creative] team and see whether the team is any good. Is this a back-door pilot? Can this turn into something? Can the star carry a series? Is this a director we need to invest in?’

The rewards are there for the risk takers, Haddock insists, because good programming always has a loyal audience.

‘Whether you liked it or not, Trudeau got good numbers,’ he says. ‘Some of the things CTV is doing are getting numbers equal to U.S. numbers. You’ll never match that ‘blown-away’ promotion that the U.S. deals with. You watch Entertainment Tonight and it’s product, product, product. One of the things that might be adjusted in Canada is the amount of publicity that the CRTC mandates for production. I’ve seen our numbers climb, dip a little, and climb back up depending on the amount of promotion we get.’

Haddock has benefited by policy, official or unofficial, in action before. Da Vinci’s Inquest was put into production, in part, because of the CBC’s political need to support the West.

‘Da Vinci’s is far from being run out,’ says Haddock, in response to questions about the show’s legacy and Vancouver’s ability to mount a series once his show and CTV series Cold Squad wrap for good. ‘Absolutely we can do another show. We’re already strategizing with broadcasters about getting another series and how to do it.

‘What [Da Vinci’s Inquest] has done,’ he says, ‘is to show the rest of Canada, broadcasters and producers and people coming in from the U.S. that there is a deeper community of talent here than people realize. I don’t have to go anywhere else [for talent]. People are proud that a Vancouver show is recognized as the number one series in Canada. It has gotten West Coast actors gigs in the east. It’s really shifted belief that Toronto is the mecca. Wherever you can get good talent assembled you can make a good show.’

Working in television at home, however, is more difficult still with funder British Columbia Film forgoing investment in television altogether – albeit more of a symbolic loss than a deal breaker for series producers.

‘It’s the present British Columbia government that needs to get familiar with how important indigenous production is,’ says Haddock. ‘It’s like the logging industry – everybody realizes that somebody has to take the bull by the horns and start building local indigenous infrastructure.’

So should we open the doors to foreign investors to quicken the pace?

‘If [a foreign investor] targeted my company and said, ‘Look, we think you’ve got a good thing going on here, we’ve got a revenue stream and output deals,’ yeah it would help me. But if we’re talking about the broadcasters? They are a Canadian resource. A lot of these guys were backed by a lot of taxpayer dollars. Is it right that suddenly foreign investors can take advantage of a sustained industry built up for years and years by you and me? I don’t think it’s the best use of taxpayer dollars. [Foreign investment] keeps people working in the short term, but it’s a band-aid solution over the long run.’

Along with Da Vinci’s Inquest and Odd Squad, Haddock say he is in talks with CBC and CTV for new crime drama series and is talking to CBS about a development slate – perhaps taking his own advice.

‘I wrote a lot of pilots back in the early ’90s for the U.S. nets and never found the right combination of broadcaster-distributor to make it all go,’ he says. ‘But now, Da Vinci’s has such a high profile around the offices [in L.A.] that I go in at a different level.’