Canadian Heritage committee  I think the staffing—

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, it does take quite a bit of time between when we complete production and when we actually get the cheques back from the government. Anything we can do to streamline that.... It seems that within CRA it's an issue of staffing. They audit, they check us, they go through all of

Canadian Heritage committee  I think we're talking about bridging the tax credits, so because these are effectively Canadian government...we're banking Canadian government paper, so the spread on that is quite low. When you get into the actual financing of a feature film and you talk about gap, bridge, and s

Canadian Heritage committee  Oh, there are lots of scripts, but “good” in front of any those is hard to find. I would say that money is easy to find if you have a great script and a great director. At the end of the day, the foundation for what we do is to tell stories, and that's all we're talking about.

Canadian Heritage committee  The money will follow.

Canadian Heritage committee  There are many, many good actors in Canada. The talent pool, both technically and from a creative perspective, is very deep. The concern we often have is finding internationally known names within Canada. That can be challenging.

Canadian Heritage committee  The cooperation with the unions in both Ontario and British Columbia is not new. But many years ago the cooperation didn't exist. It wasn't there until there was a significant threat 15 years or so ago and California suggested they could move away without some labour stability in

Canadian Heritage committee  I think we both agree with what he is proposing. The grind does leave on the table money that we would like to put into films and allow us to create something a bit more competitive. With regard to Telefilm, certainly in the west we're always chasing Telefilm where we can. As a

Canadian Heritage committee  That is correct.

Canadian Heritage committee  I can maybe field this, because I deal with the immigration concerns on a daily basis for the different films that we shoot. There has been a change in the immigration policy with regard to bringing foreign workers into Canada. As Peter said, the number of crew that we import, g

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak today. I'm a feature film producer and television producer who lives and breathes a number of things that Peter has just talked through. Our company is called Brightlight Pictures. We've been actively producing in the industry fo