Vancouver: The Canadian service production industry expects the U.S. Commerce Department to dismiss a petition asking for countervailing duties on U.S.-based runaway production by Dec. 24.
‘It’s more rhetoric than reality,’ says Tom Adair, executive director of the BC Council of Film Unions, referring to the high-profile campaign by the L.A.-based Film and Television Action Committee objecting to Canada’s tax-incentive programs. ‘The countervailing duty is not strongly supported [in the U.S.].’
The whole issue, he adds, is overblown. ‘The nature of the business and the money is mobile,’ says Adair. ‘In Vancouver, we took the dregs of production – syndicated television and cable, stuff the L.A. industry wouldn’t accommodate. Who knew it would be the fastest growing segment of the industry today?’

Montreal: The long-awaited nominations came through Dec. 6 as Canadian Heritage Minister Sheila Copps named Richard Stursberg the new executive director of Telefilm Canada and Charles Belanger as its chair. The appointments are for a five-year term. Former Canadian Television Fund chair Stursberg starts Jan. 1, 2002. Belanger takes over in February.
Stursberg was present at a Telefilm seminar on future orientations held Dec. 9-11 in Mont Tremblant, QC. More than 100 participants representing all sectors of the industry attended the timely confab. ‘It was great,’ he says. ‘I got a chance to meet a lot of people and hear their views.’

Montreal: The Dec. 10 federal budget renews government’s $100-million contribution to the Canadian Television Fund for fiscal 2002/03. CTF’s budget this year is in the order of $230 million, including $80 million to $85 million from cable and satellite program distributors. The secured funding means revised CTF guidelines for next year will apply, but the industry would still like to see CTF’s planning capacity increased with a multi-year commitment.
Chapter 4 of Finance Minister Paul Martin’s budget document announces, ‘In addition, incremental funding to the CBC and the Canadian Television and Cable Production Fund has been extended for one more year.’
The additional provision for CBC in 2002/03 matches this year’s extra money, $60 million.

While Corus Entertainment’s uprooting of WTN to Toronto and laying off its entire Winnipeg staff has caused an uproar among many of its female casualties, the CRTC is less concerned with the location of the service than it is with WTN carrying out its mandate under the new structure.
The commission tends not to mandate the location of a broadcast service, unless, as in the case of Salter Street’s Independent Film Channel Canada, the licence is approved based in part on its location.
In the case of WTN, the service’s location was hardly brought up in the proceedings or the decision, with the exception of the commission encouraging ‘Corus to maintain and build on WTN’s orientation as a Western-based service.’

‘Unexpected’ is likely the best word to characterize this year’s Genie nominations. No doubt many will be surprised by what isn’t nominated. Absent among the best motion picture finalists are some of 2001’s most high-profile Canadian releases.

Films Nominations

All sides of a labor action at the CBC are girding for a long-term battle as both union and management hold firm to their respective positions.

Vancouver: For Canada’s Genie Awards, like any subjective contest, picking the best of the year’s films is a controversial act. But the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television that runs the awards gala remains adamantly apolitical.

Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)

While Trina McQueen’s resignation as CTV’s president and COO and announcement that she will be retiring from the profession on which she’s so gracefully placed her mark sent shock waves through the Canadian industry in late November, the venerated ‘mother of modern broadcasting,’ as one collegue puts it, says she has no intention of falling off the radar screen.

Looking back on the Canadian feature film scene this year, one recurring image pops to mind: raw dirty sex. That is, sex behind a dumpster, shot so as not to expose the voluptuous nymphet on the bottom, but rather to highlight the less than graceful pumping of one white, jiggly, male ass on top, in Last Wedding.

Cdns head to Sundance