Canadian Heritage Committee on May 11th, 2015

[André Provencher]

In my opinion, we are waiting for the government to start establishing a more favourable environment for private investment in the Canadian feature film industry. If other countries around the world can manage to bring more private funds into financing cinematic works, I feel the Canada can also look at doing so.

As we have emphasized, a year or two ago, Telefilm Canada instituted a new way of evaluating the performance of films that included its financial performance, meaning the number of people who went to see the films in theatres and how much revenue came from other means of promotion. We feel that we have to do more along those lines.

Since you began your work, we have heard a lot about regulations and public funds. I am not denying that those are important elements. But we want to draw your attention to the performance of the funds invested in the Canadian feature film industry. I feel that we can get more out of it and, most of all, we can mobilize other investors.

What forms could that take? Come on now, we have enough innovation and imagination to handle that. It could be tax incentives or specific incentives for private investors.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

But we have those already.

[André Provencher]

You have them in the form of tax credits. As a person or as a company, that’s as far as it goes. Everything is channelled through providing money or through governments. Among the private funds I know of in Quebec, we certainly have the Harold Greenberg Fund and the Cogeco Fund. The issue is how to make it possible to mobilize more money internally and make investments more profitable than they are at the moment.

In France, for example, research by René Bonnell has looked into some solutions including deferring some fees and a greater role for producers in funding their own activities. I feel that it would be very interesting to look into those approaches.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

You mentioned four approaches.

Let’s take them one at a time so that you can explain to us how, in your opinion, they could make new financing available. You call it your wish list.

You are asking for the financial criterion to be more closely linked to the ability of the distributors than to that of the producers.

[André Provencher]

First, on the financial side, we would like Telefilm Canada, which, we have to recognize, has already made a considerable effort, to give 75% of its performance criteria weighting to profitability, to how films do in theatres, and that there be a penalty for poor performance.

Currently, the penalties are rather mild for producers. They have to be more concerned about the commercial success of their work.

Second, as to the selection of feature films—

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

If I may, I would like to know what you mean when you say penalties.

[André Provencher]

Currently, if a producer launches three films that do not perform very well, his proposals to Telefilm Canada will be given less consideration. That is a form of penalty. That is to say that his production activities may be affected by the poor performance. We are talking about three films.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

And about performance at the box office?

[André Provencher]

Yes, but actually—

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

There's no box office any more.

[André Provencher]

No, exactly. It’s about economic performance, but also about festival performance. Telefilm Canada considers other criteria. I think the system is adequate. We just want the weighting of the factors inside the performance evaluation system to be reviewed.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Have you announced the weighting you would like to see publicly?

[André Provencher]

We have announced it publicly to the leadership at Telefilm Canada.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Could the committee have a copy of that?

[André Provencher]

I think so, yes.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Okay, thank you.

Second, you are suggesting that there should be more films with broader public appeal and fewer art films.

[André Provencher]

Yes, but that does not mean eliminating art films.

For five or six years, we have seen quite a troubling decline in the box office performance of Quebec films. Last week, in France, they published the results of theatre attendance for French films. French film producers have 44% of the theatre market for films in France. Here it is 5%. In France, they have managed to galvanize the industry by turning to the consumer more. They are more driven by a film’s success in theatres. I am not saying that we totally ignore that aspect here. However, once more, I feel that there are ways of encouraging producers to come up with better-performing films.

Currently, some Quebec films are performing quite well. Léa Pool’s last film did well in theatres. The same goes for Aurélie Laflamme – Les pieds sur terre , which seems to be getting off to quite a good start. However, other films end their theatre runs without even taking in $100,000 at the box office. That means that only 7,000 or 8,000 people went to a theatre to see them.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

I am sorry, but my time is up.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Thank you, Mr. Dion.

Mr. Dykstra, you have the floor for seven minutes, and that will be it.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Provencher, I want you to expand on a couple of the points you made, and I think it follows up a little bit on the comments you've just made. You mentioned the Canada Media Fund and that style of funding for Telefilm. I wonder if you could expand on how that type of funding would work better for Telefilm than what is currently in place.

[André Provencher]

I am not able to tell you exactly when the Canada Media Fund changed its financial management system in such a major way. It created envelopes that are now managed by the broadcasters. There are mechanisms to define from year to year the envelopes that each one gets, whether Radio-Canada, TVA, CBC, or the Canadian specialty channels.

Today, mostly market criteria dictate the choice of which series to produce or which shows to put on the air that will be financed by the Canadian Media Fund. So, I would venture to say that there is no longer any qualitative involvement on the part of the bureaucrats or employees of the Canada Media Fund.

We feel that, for television, this system is very successful. We do not see why it could not also be used to determine the choices in the feature film industry. That would mean that the distributors and the theatre operators could contribute beforehand to select films. They would certainly bring to the table a perspective that is based on their knowledge and their perception of consumer tastes and trends.

In fact, we say that the consumer should be the starting point for every change in the industry.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Prem or Ann, one of the fascinating pieces of what you're doing which I think continues to surprise and shock a lot of us is that you're actually doing this without any kind of government funding, and certainly the intention is not to move in that direction. I wonder if any of your competitors, large or small, are endeavouring to work with the same kind of program and process that you've put in place.

[Ann Mainville-Neeson]

The Storyhive success, the innovation that we've brought to the table for the committee today, as far as we know, no other competitor is doing that type of platform.

We certainly would agree with Mr. Provencher that consumers have to come first in determining some of the programming that gets made. That's what's great with where the Canada Media Fund has moved its envelope funding toward and where the film industry might benefit from the same things. When we say that our program is helping to build an audience, it's that consumers, by voting for what will get funded, what will get made, have already decided this is something that they would like to see. Making funding decisions based on what consumers want to see ultimately tends to lead to success.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

That isn't a bad idea.

Leading into that, I'm glad you commented on that, because I was looking for one or two recommendations from you in terms of the study.

You come at this from a completely different perspective. You're not an agency organization, at least in this regard, at least in the study that we're looking at here, at least in the work that you're doing, that is anticipating or trying to seek government funding. You come at this from a little bit of a different perspective. I thought there might be a recommendation or two that you would make that you thought would really assist us in terms of our study and the outcome that we'd like to see.

[Ann Mainville-Neeson]

Without getting into specifics, we don't have a specific recommendation, except to say that adding the consumer into some part of the decision-making process has been successful for us with Storyhive, and we believe there is a big lesson learned that can translate to other forms of funding, such as for feature films.

While the funding mechanisms otherwise which are somewhat different, such as tax credits, which are certainly not the same thing...the notion that somehow you would build into the system a component of success with the consumer, I think, is the one recommendation we would strongly urge you to implement.