That's correct.
The feature film industry is a very risky one. It's highly capitalized, and you heard from your previous panel that there's no sure formula for success. The way the industry is formulated, for every individual production there's a single-purpose corporate entity created that will enter into agreements with the unions and the guilds, but also with suppliers.
Unfortunately, as in any industry, there are some players who have failed to meet payroll and failed to pay suppliers. What is problematic and what Alberta has dealt with is that they will say: “That wasn't us; that was the previous company. This is a brand new entity, and that has nothing to do with us.” Well, Alberta—the first province to do this—has said no, we're going to look at your track record and we're going to look at what you've done. If you've defaulted, you shouldn't be coming up here for more money.
I'll give you a quick example. There was a show in Alberta in 2008, When Calls the Heart, that left $1.2 million in unpaid wages and invoices to suppliers. They finished the show in Romania because it blew up in Alberta. They finished the pilot in Romania and came back to British Columbia—the same production company, with the same writers, same directors, same producer—and got access to funding from the federal and provincial government and are in their second season.
I just think that's fundamentally wrong.
So what Alberta has done—and I would strongly recommend that this committee look at it, and we're doing this across every province—is to consider whether you have a history of not paying your bills, and factoring that in to whether you get additional funding in the future.
That should be a fact.