Thank you, Jennifer.
The main focus of government intervention over the last 50 years has been on the supply side of the industry. When one seeks to develop a new or young sector, it makes perfect sense to stimulate first and foremost the creation of product, but we are a long way from where we were five decades ago. We now have an industry capacity able to generate $1.2 billion of feature film production each year.
The world of media, however, is changing rapidly and traditional business models are being fundamentally impacted. New technology enabled largely by the Internet and wireless capacity has led to a proliferation of options for consumers to access filmed content. Canadians, and indeed audiences in all leading nations, are not the passive viewers they once were. They are very much engaged in actively deciding what they see and how and when they see it. The entire audiovisual paradigm is shifting from one that was supply side oriented to one that is very clearly much more demand side focused and controlled by the consumer.
For our industry to prosper well into the future, it is critically important that we at the very least maintain our current level of capacity and enhance our competitiveness by maximizing efficiencies in the system. That alone, however, won’t be enough in the long run. The industry, working in partnership with government, must begin, and do so very quickly, to place more emphasis on promoting the value of our industry. This entails several things.
First, it's important that Canadians fully appreciate our sector and the content we produce. Canadians don’t generally know what content is Canadian or what was filmed here in Canada for consumption internationally. They should know, and I’m certain that if more Canadians did know, they would have an enhanced sense of pride knowing that the work was done right here in Canada by Canadians. Greater promotion and education in this regard would also have the added benefit of raising awareness of the job opportunities our sector offers for the next generation of creative minds.
Second, the growth and success of our sector going forward will increasingly hinge on our ability to promote the value of our industry in international markets, including the quality production services we offer. To grow our industry, we need to attract greater financing from international markets and we need to sell more Canadian content abroad.
More resources, therefore, dedicated for export development to help producers do more business in both established and emerging markets internationally would go a long way to stimulating more exports and to attracting more inward money. We believe you can help in this area by making a recommendation for the departments of Canadian Heritage and International Trade to work with us and others in the sector to develop an international promotion, trade, and export strategy, and dedicate the necessary resources to executing such initiatives.
Let me just say in conclusion that we've achieved a great deal of success with our feature film industry since the late 1960s, but we can and should do more to continue growing our industry and creating more jobs for Canadians. We can and should maximize our tax credit programs and reduce to the bare minimum the inefficiencies that currently exist, including that caused by red tape. We can and should incent television broadcasters, particularly the CBC, to more actively finance and promote Canadian films. We can and should place more emphasis on promoting the value of our sector to Canadians and to the rest of the world. We can and should capitalize more fully on our export potential.
Mr. Chair and committee members, I say we should, and with your help I know we can.
We'd be happy to answer your questions. Thank you.