I think there are two issues here. One is the objective regulations themselves. In my opinion, and in the opinion of my members, the regulations that exist now are long overdue for an overhaul. In a more subjective area as far as what constitutes Canadian content, I think we need to be a lot more open and inclusive about that.
I think one of the frustrations in English Canada is that there has been a tendency, particularly with government money when you're getting investments from Telefilm Canada, to make very serious movies about very depressing subjects.
I did an analysis of the development of feature films and discovered that an extraordinary percentage of government money at the development level was being put into the least attractive genre for audiences, which is the psychological or the bleak drama. I mean, audiences typically don't like to go to those, even if there are big movie stars in them. What they like to see are comedies, romance, action adventure. There's no reason we can't make those kinds of movies here.
If you look at the success of movies in French-speaking Canada, a lot of it is due to the entertainment value. There are a lot of comedies. There were two English successes last year, Bon Cop, Bad Cop, which was widely entertaining, and the Trailer Park Boys movie. People went to see them.
I think that when we're dealing with Canadian content we want to instruct the people who invest government money to be much wider in their appreciation and encouragement of those genres. I can say that in working with Telefilm and the new working group over the last year and a half we've made great strides there. I think the message needs to get out that it's okay to laugh; it's okay to make a coming-of-age comedy about growing up in Red Deer. There's nothing wrong with it. You don't have to make a serious drama about your mother dying slowly of Alzheimer's and the family coming over Easter weekend to visit her. Canadians aren't necessarily going to be attracted to that if they think it's going to be depressing.