Canadian Heritage Committee on Dec. 4th, 2006

[Jean-Pierre C. Gauthier]

Most definitely the key factor that we found out, and that was already common knowledge in industry, was the exchange rate, Canadian currency against American dollars. That was when we saw the Canadian dollar climb back up against the American dollar.

From a Hollywood perspective, they crunch numbers to see what their best deal would be in terms of where to go and shoot. This made a significant difference in that it made a lot of productions think twice about shooting here.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

I think it was pretty well during the same timeframe that the governor in California started to aggressively attack the Canadian industry. I'm wondering if there was anything they implemented that adversely affected this as well.

[Jean-Pierre C. Gauthier]

Mr. Schwarzenegger was elected as governor around that time, but he didn't implement anything after that. I think the budget concerns in California didn't allow him to do so. Other states actually did. In the United States, for example, with increased competitiveness from those other centres, New York actually did play a role.

The big push to repatriate--from their perspective, anyway--the productions in California was in motion before Mr. Schwarzenegger became the governor. It's been around for a few years. There was actually a proceeding that some lobby group had undertaken under the NAFTA agreement that actually ended up going nowhere.

So there have been a lot of attempts and a lot of concerns from some sectors, especially in California, to try to get productions back.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

But bringing it back to domestic reasons, as far as you can tell or as far as your studies have indicated, it was the exchange value.

[Jean-Pierre C. Gauthier]

It was one of the key factors, for sure.

Actually, we did produce a report out of that study. If you're interested, I would be glad to share it with the committee. You can review the various parameters and what we found out when we asked everybody in research why we saw that decrease in the summer of 2004.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

That would be fantastic.

Do I have a few seconds left?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

One short question.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Sure.

Some of the producers or the other people we've talked to have indicated that it's difficult dealing with the federal government when there are pockets of money in different places. Producers have to shop around a little to see where they can find the money.

Is there any hope or any intent of possibly streamlining the system so that different funds might communicate better with one another?

[Jean-Pierre C. Gauthier]

I think so. One of the key priorities we're talking about is centralization. For example, have one place to get your Canadian content certificate. We mention it for tax credit purposes, but the CRTC, for broadcast purposes, has some procedures as well to certify Canadian content in different productions. That's an example of where we can make some movement.

As well, when we look at the mandates of Telefilm and the National Film Board, part of the thinking is that we want to make sure we use these as good opportunities to streamline as much as possible. Telefilm internally has a lot of control over the various programs they have in place. I know they're listening very closely to industry as well to see how they could streamline and make things more effective.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Mr. Bélanger.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

This is a terrible, terrible thing I'm going to do here, Mr. Chairman. I'm going to take advantage of the presence of the people who know the industry well to help me with my Christmas shopping.

Is there a place where one can get--this will show you how old my equipment is, and I'm talking about the electronic one—in either VHS or DVD format—

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Or eight-track?

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

No, Charlie, those I'm saving to sell later to a museum, or on eBay. And that's a little facetious about the eight-track.

Last year the Gemini awards celebrated their 25th anniversary. I looked for a box set of the best films made in Canada for the last 25 years and I couldn't find it anywhere. Since you probably can't find 25 years anywhere in any event, I looked for a five-year set. Then I looked for a one-year set. I couldn't find it anywhere.

Is there any place or establishment where consumers could buy Canadian feature films, in English, in French or in another language, to give as gifts or keep for themselves? If not, could you include that in your research?

Besides the fact that it could help me with my Christmas shopping, several people would be interested in buying those feature films. But they are very hard to find. Why is that?

[Jean-Pierre C. Gauthier]

It varies greatly from one language market to another in Canada. In the French-language market, mainly in the province of Quebec, it's much easier to find film titles produced in Quebec, on the retail market as well—

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Sure. I went and saw La grande séduction (Seducing Dr. Lewis) and I wanted to give the film as a gift. I looked for it here in this region. I admit I didn't look for it on the Quebec side, although I could have. But you can't find it here. I suppose the reverse is true: on the Quebec side, you can't find English films, even though they may be in demand.

[Jean-Pierre C. Gauthier]

It's harder.

The most practical way to get those titles is probably to buy them online.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Do you have to go to each production company and distributor? If not, do you go to a retail business like Archambault?

[Jean-Pierre C. Gauthier]

You'd have to do an online search of various retailers. You can probably find the title eventually by doing an Internet search.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

So there's no incentive to that effect.

[Jean-Pierre C. Gauthier]

No. We're talking private property here. The rights to those films are held by the distributors when it comes to retail sales, for example. It's up to them to promote and sell their titles. They're not government owned.

I will make a note of that excellent question, the idea of establishing incentives to facilitate access for Canadians to those titles. We could definitely do better, that's for sure.

You also have to understand that the retail market for DVD sales is largely made up of big box stores like Wal-Mart, Future Shop, etc. Their business model is to choose only blockbusters. They don't have a very large number of titles. The reality of our market makes life difficult not only for Canadian films but also for independent films, even US independent films, to a large degree. That reality often causes a problem for the consumer in search of something different. In view of online purchases, Internet offers an avenue that did not exist previously. Could that be better structured, better organized? No doubt.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

It would be my suggestion that somehow we may have a role to play as a department, to help package Canadian film and make it more accessible as a package.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

You can retire, with a big pension. You can do that. You can become an entrepreneur.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

I can switch from my role here as chair, just a bit, just to answer something. I would look into it myself, but it's something that I think an entrepreneur could do. In my little village of Sebringville, where I live, there is a building right beside my building that's called Music, and they sell only Canadian music there. You can't get anything else. It's all Canadian. That's all they promote, and they've done a great job at it. I'm going to check with them to see if they have any DVDs or do anything on film, and whether, again, it's something that might be put together. But believe you me, they've done a very good job. People come from all over the place just to buy Canadian music, and they help to promote it very much. I'll check with them on the DVDs.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I don't know what inspired me to ask that. I just have to say that if you look at the visual I have here of Jim Abbott sitting beneath a poster of Tommy Douglas, it just struck me that—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!