Goin’ down the runaway road to natpe

New Orleans: A funny thing happened on the way to the natpe forum. Two nationalities scratched and pulled hair in a hot tussle over cultural content in television and film production. Over who subsidizes what types of production, and why. And, of course, over why there’s still such a trumped-up fuss about so-called ‘runaway’ production.

The setting for this brouhaha? A panel session entitled Canadian Gold Rush held a day before the trade show on the mammoth convention floor got rolling.

As is their wont, the Canadians, directed by seasoned moderator Pat Ferns, gave informative but polite overviews of federal and provincial tax credits available to foreign producers shooting in Canada. Some, such as Chum Television’s Jay Switzer, pointed out it has been a ‘great, long-standing concern’ of the Canadian government that tax and simulcast advantages encourage Canadian broadcasters ‘to air Canadian voices and stories.’ Switzer noted that private casters ‘have to air 60% Canadian content across their schedules and 50% in primetime.’ By this fall, the privates must air eight hours of Cancon each week in prime.

Even though Robin Spry of Telescene Film Group in Montreal aired out a different philosophy than Switzer – arguing to retain Canadian tax subsidies and other production support, but only for Canadian-owned projects – he certainly backs Canadian-targeted support for the arts.

So it’s not surprising that when American panelists slammed Canadian tax credits as ‘artifice’ which unfairly steal u.s. productions from u.s.-based crews, the Canadians on the panel lost patience. Consider the speech from Chuck Fries of Chuck Fries Productions, a man who expanded on the consensus from a recent meeting involving u.s. congressmen and a myriad of crew, writers and actors unions. Sounding almost eloquent and logical, he said: ‘Government dollars are not offered to support culture. It’s an industrial model…and it means tens of thousands of American jobs are being shipped north of the border…and it’s not the stars, but the crews’ in Florida or Carolina or wherever who are losing out. He even characterized government credits, particularly the Production Services Tax Credit, as a ‘Faustian bargain.’

Many on the panel, many in the audience, began visibly to fume.

Finally, when an audience member demanded to know why any production should leave the u.s., when there are perfectly good crews lacking work in New Orleans, Spry forcefully put her in the big picture. He asked simply if she was aware that Canadian films occupy only between 2% and 4% of screen time in their own country, while u.s. films take up a whopping 90%-plus. Silent, shaking her head in disbelief, she sat down.

And support for Canada’s position on tax credits rolled in from another part of the boxing ring, as it were. Brian Harris, managing director of u.k.-based Pearson Television International, says he often works with Canadians and recognizes our cultural subsidies and broadcast quotas as a mirror of systems in place in countries all over the world. ‘Because u.s. producers can dump product cheaply all over the world.’

And in the after-sweat, heart racing with the wonder of its own daring, one nation – Canada – marveled that in this round at least, it had not succumbed to the charisma of Americans’ demand for manifest cultural destiny.

In short, this was a really hot panel discussion over tax breaks for foreigners shooting in Canada, and, as Lucy Maud Montgomery would have put it, the Canadians gave the Americans what for.