Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ladies and gentlemen members of the committee, on behalf of the Union des artistes, I want to thank you for inviting us to appear as you consider the Canadian feature film industry.
As the chair mentioned, I am the President of the Union des artistes, commonly known as UDA. UDA is a professional labour union representing artists working in French in Canada, and artists working in a language other than English or French in Quebec.
We represent 12,700 artists who work as actors, singers, hosts and dancers. Our members work in a number of disciplines, including feature film productions. For example, they are actors, stunt doubles, voice actors and dubbing directors.
UDA's role is to defend the social, economic and moral interests of its members, who are mostly self-employed workers. Negotiating minimum working conditions and artist compensation in our areas of responsibility is at the core of our activities. Our role is also to represent our members in political forums such as this one.
I want to begin by emphasizing the appropriateness of the study you have undertaken. The Canadian and Quebec film industry plays a key role in promoting our cultural identity, and it is now facing considerable challenges. As an actress working in the film industry, I could attest to that myself.
I know that a number of witnesses you have heard from so far have told you about the industry's challenges and put forward concrete solutions. That is why I would like to focus on a specific issue that has not been discussed up until now—the future of French-language dubbing of film and television works.
Dubbing plays a critical role in our film industry. It allows the public to view English Canadian and foreign films in a language close to them. Made-in-Canada dubbing provides Canadian francophones with a high-quality experience. In fact, the works dubbed here do a better job of taking into account the Canadian public's language and cultural sensitivities. Many other countries around the world also prefer dubbing as a language adaptation model.
In Quebec alone, about 800 professionals and artists are involved in dubbing. That includes actors and directors who are members of the Union des artistes, but also hundreds of artists and artisans such as technicians or adaptors—authors who translate from English to French.
The Association nationale des doubleurs professionnels, or ANDP, which represents the 14 biggest dubbing companies in Quebec, estimated the industry's revenues in 2012 at $23 million.
Today, I want to raise your awareness of the fact that the Quebec dubbing industry is currently experiencing a crisis. For a few months already, a slowdown has persisted in terms of activity, leading to a number of layoffs. UDA actually just renewed its collective agreement with ANDP and agreed to a decrease in artists' rates from 15% to 25%, depending on the type of production. This extraordinary measure shows how serious the current situation is.
We took a vote, and I will not hide the fact that the majority voted in favour of that reduction by a ratio of 5 to 1. Of course, it was unbelievable. Our union works on protecting our artists' quality of work, and we had to negotiate lower rates. That took a lot of courage from self-employed workers. They have all my admiration, sincerely, as those are families and self-employed workers who are already in a precarious situation. In their case, decreases of 15% to 25% are huge. I applaud them and admire their courage.
The Quebec government, which also knows that this crisis is threatening the industry's sustainability, reversed its 2014 decision to reduce the tax credit for dubbing by 20%. In fact, Quebec has reintroduced that tax credit in its March budget.
There are three main reasons behind the current crisis. First, the competition is increasing.
France is still our traditional competitor, but new players have joined the field such as Belgium, Spain, Italy and Morocco, which have entered the market with an extremely competitive offering.
Second, our dubbing sector finds itself in an uneven playing field. Several of the countries I just mentioned can provide more attractive rates and funding conditions for local and foreign producers. France also still has regulations that require feature films released in theatres to be dubbed in France. The difference in market size, market structure and funding conditions provided mean that, all too often, a film is dubbed overseas based on the idea that Canadian broadcasters will buy it anyway.
Third, the emergence of new virtual distribution models—which were discussed earlier—is also contributing to the current crisis. Theatrical releases still have the highest proportion of works dubbed in Canada. The industry tells us that about 80% of theatrical releases were dubbed here. They are usually foreign, mainly American, productions.
However, we are increasingly losing our grip on film productions not shown in theatres, such as DVDs, as well as television productions such as television series and virtual broadcasts. Here, I am thinking of Netflix, the Internet, as well as Illico, in Quebec. The shift in the public's viewing patterns toward virtual content—products that are not dubbed here—contributes to the current crisis.
The Union des artistes has long been thinking about and discussing these issues with its members and with various Quebec government agencies through forums and consultations. We think that now is the time to take action.
In concrete terms, here are our three main recommendations for the federal government.
First, we suggest that the Canada Media Fund—CMF—program for dubbing and subtitling be enhanced, to take into account the market's evolution and to better achieve its objective of increasing accessibility to the current programming. By improving, I mean simplifying and expanding access to the program, and its enhancement.
Second, we suggest that the government change its rules for awarding grants to Canadian producers of feature films and television content, so as to require Canadian producers to have their productions dubbed in Canada when they receive public funding. For example, we estimate that the dubbing of 25% of Canadian series fully funded in Canada is currently out of our reach. It is absurd that productions made in Canada, which are funded by our own government and which we want to make accessible to all Canadians, are giving business to our competitors.
Third, we suggest that rules related to Canadian content be revised, so that francophone television broadcasters prioritize Canadian dubbing when available and so that they have to increase the percentage of local dubbings across their programming schedule.
We are actually somewhat worried about the potential effects of the the CRTC's new broadcasting regulatory policy announced on March 12—
