Canadian Heritage committee  There are certainly more specialty channels, and there has been an increase in documentaries, but the budgets have gone down. The hourly budgets have gone down because of economics, and they can't pay as much. It's been a source of concern for our producers who want to do one-off documentaries that really look at things in depth.

Canadian Heritage committee  Not budget cuts to us but to the Department of Canadian Heritage. I think program review was going on, and as part of that our budget was cut.

Canadian Heritage committee  Oh, no, no. We were part of the feature film policy, and if you look at the evaluation commissioned by the Department of Canadian Heritage last year--it was done by Nordicity, I believe--we actually got the best report card in terms of what we did.

Canadian Heritage committee  Well– Yes, they did. But I'm not in government, so I don't know what their problems are.

Canadian Heritage committee  It's not that they want to avoid it, it's that the way of financing has changed quite a bit. I'd say that seven years ago you used to be able to finance a film from the educational sector. Education, as you know, has had its share of problems, and that's no longer possible. This fund started back in 1988, under Flora MacDonald.

Canadian Heritage committee  The National Film Board, as you know, is a producer; we're a funder. We work with producers to try to help them develop business skills. The National Film Board will act as the producer. So they are mainly interested in working with directors in the private sector because they have their own producers who will look after getting all the distribution rights and getting the financing together so that the director can just focus on the creative side.

Canadian Heritage committee  The difference is as I've stated. The other thing is that the National Film Board supports emerging filmmakers, but when they're talking about filmmakers, again, they're talking about directors. When we're talking about emerging talent, we're primarily talking about producers.

Canadian Heritage committee  It's interesting, yes, The Corporation was funded by us, and--

Canadian Heritage committee  I would have to tell you that we haven't really examined that. I think the whole issue is fairly new. The funding agencies are all trying to grapple with this. The producers are trying to grapple with the rights they will be able to hold onto, or not hold onto, and how the broadcasters will pay for it or not pay for it.

Canadian Heritage committee  I can think of one project right now, done by Caroline Martel, which was le Fantôme de l'opératrice. Her film was on the telephone operator and it was all archival footage. It was a huge amount of work and a huge cost for her. I think it gets prohibitive for some producers, many producers, to deal with this kind of thing.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, because we have a mandate to deal with new and emerging talent--not our whole fund, but a portion of it has to go that way--and they tend to be smaller budgets. Generally speaking, the educational information area is an entry into the film industry, so a lot of people will start in this area because they can do it on smaller budgets.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, the lawyer from Vancouver. Bart Simpson is the producer. The film started out as a non-theatrical project. It was going to be with TVO. We are often partners with educational broadcasters like Télé-Québec, TVO, SCN, and Access Alberta. They're very important partners. So the film was going to be in that area, for non-theatrical use, but it then grew into, as you know, a feature film, which none of us saw at the beginning.

Canadian Heritage committee  I can tell you that we've had a contributions agreement with the Department of Canadian Heritage since 2000. That expired October 5, 2006. The contributions agreement started off at $1.8 million. Through some budget cuts it was reduced in 2002 or 2003 to $1.55 million. So we've had $1.55 million from the government.

Canadian Heritage committee  We can send you the report, if you are interested.

Canadian Heritage committee  It's interesting that in documentary almost everybody has made the switch to digital. In terms of the price of projects, I can't say that I've noticed a real increase.