Before we go any further, I think we should clearly state that DOC does significantly support the concept of public broadcasting, both in spirit and in function. We truly aspire to live and work in a world where CBC plays a critical role and works together with the independent sector to create this vibrant programming.
The independent sector is actually a very strong and thriving industry. In the last statistic that I have—it's a little bit out of date because we haven't updated our study yet—in 2003-2004 just the independent production sector alone created $42 million of export dollars, and as well employed 14,000 full-time-equivalent jobs.
When taking the CTF into context, we receive about 17% of the funding, but translate that into 40% of programming volume. So what we're getting is a strong value for dollar and strong programming, and it's something that's heavily relied on by public broadcasters and private broadcasters alike.
As we stated in the 1999 license hearing, when the CBC was last up for renewal, we feel that there needs to be a commitment made to create a strand devoted to documentaries that are an art form and are a catalyst for social change. We call these point-of-view documentaries, and some other people call it a creative documentary. These are different from in-house productions because they have a high degree of authorial control and expression, they benefit from an independent voice, and they don't have any constraints of rules and mandates overhead.
We have seen clearly from what ends up in the theatres, what ends up on television, and what ends up being part of a consciousness that documentaries help to raise the level of discussion and discourse in our public in Canada, and we should continue to see this rise. I really believe that it has a strong public benefit.
DOC would also like to see a more specific commitment made to regional documentary production, or inter-regional co-production for documentary, both so that we have a wide expression of Canadian views seen on television, and from our point of view so that you can live in more than two or three different places in Canada and still have a viable career as a documentary filmmaker.
As a side note, I think it's important to say that many of our members have suggested that it be a little bit easier to work with both the CBC and the SRC at the same time, since documentaries are very favourable to the concept of a multilingual broadcast, and they often are subtitled to begin with, to have and aspire toward a truly national broadcast of any particular documentary.
On behalf of my board of directors and my chair, Michael McNamara; my colleague Daniel and I, and all the members of DOC across the country, we'd like to thank you for the opportunity to present these remarks before the committee.
We welcome your questions.