Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
My name is Scott Garvie, and I am the Senior Vice-President, Business and Legal Affairs, at Shaftesbury Films in Toronto. I am also the current Chair of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Media Producers Association. Thank you very much for inviting me today to speak to you about the importance of copyright to producers. It directly impacts our ability to make great Canadian shows. To fairly remunerate both producers and talent, we must continue to recognize the producer as the author and first owner of copyright in an audiovisual work. I'd like to talk about what producers do to help explain why that's important.
You may already be familiar with Shaftesbury's hit TV shows Murdoch Mysteries and Frankie Drake Mysteries on CBC. I'm proud to tell you that Murdoch Mysteries and Frankie Drake Mysteries are two of the top three highest-rated shows on CBC currently. Some of our other projects include the YouTube series and movie Carmilla, which enjoys a cult-like popularity with the LGBTQ community; the thriller series Slasher on Netflix; and Emerald Code, an empowering web series for girls about science and technology. We are currently producing two new prime-time drama series, which will be released later this year, one with Rogers called Hudson and Rex and another with Corus called Departure.
The producer has many roles. How do we make great content? Frankly, there is a little bit of alchemy in every show we create. Sometimes a show that seems destined for success on its technical merits ends up missing the mark with the target audience while another show will achieve success beyond our original hopes. Murdoch Mysteries is a great example of this. Who would have thought that a period drama set in 1890s Toronto would find such a large global audience? Thanks to the superb storytelling, production values and casting decisions, it's a hit show watched in more than 110 countries, and we're happily going on to our 13th season on CBC.
To make great TV shows and films, we need to wear many hats. We often call ourselves treasure-hunters. We search for an idea, a concept or an original story from a writer. We develop those ideas into the content that you see by engaging and working with creative talent.
In the case of Murdoch Mysteries, we optioned a series of novels by little-known Toronto-based author Maureen Jennings. We then spent time developing it, and over the years, we've worked with many writers and directors. In fact, we've had three different sets of head writers or show runners over the 13 years, and have hired over 75 different directors to work on that show. Our in-house creative team played a major role in shaping the series. All this is done under the direction of our in-house team of producers, which includes myself, Christina Jennings—who was just awarded an Order of Canada for her work on Murdoch Mysteries—and Julie Lacey.
We're also risk-takers. We invest revenues from our past successes into the R and D that's necessary to create a slate of new shows. For example, we spent 10 years developing our new show Hudson and Rex because we believed strongly in the concept—it's a cop-and-dog show—and wanted to get it right. We invested around $300,000 in development money of our own funds, paying writers and others to get the show to the stage where we could finally get a broadcaster to commission it.
We are also HR managers. We are the key touchpoint for all creative and financial elements and partnerships that make a project successful. Whether we are debating creative notes with directors, negotiating with a writer's agent or convincing our lead actor—in the case of Rex, a dog—to come out of his trailer, we are the connection point for talent. In addition, we have our fingers on the pulse of the market.
In the case of Murdoch Mysteries, we have a deal with a U.K. broadcaster; a French broadcaster, France Télévisions; CBC; and a foreign sales agent in ITV. We are in constant dialogue with them about how we can best serve their specific audience bases and ensure that the show is as successful and long-running as possible throughout the world.
We are also accountants. The Canadian tax credit system is premised on the producer's ownership of copyright. We juggle a variety of budgets, tax credit calculations, cash flow and investments to get the show made. At the same time, we ensure that our talent and crew are fairly remunerated for their work. That includes being responsible for administering the waterfall of revenues that flow to investors and creative participants after the show is made.
We are sales people. We are always selling, whether it's selling our idea to a writer or a broadcaster or pitching our vision of a new TV series to the multiple partners that we need to come on board. Shaftesbury has a team of 35 people in Toronto and London who work hard to support our shows like Murdoch Mysteries and Frankie Drake Mysteries.
There are a couple of things that we're doing to spin off to keep on increasing the audience engagement for the show. We have a Murdoch Mysteries-inspired escape room at Casa Loma in Toronto. We've done a behind-the-scenes web series with CBC, featuring the actors in Murdoch Mysteries and Frankie Drake Mysteries talking about the episodes.
We also have a cross-country tour of the Frankie period costumes going across Canada so people can see and touch the clothing. We're currently developing a theatrical play that will run across Canada based on the Murdoch brand.
Producers are—and must be—the authors and first owners of an audiovisual work. However, during this process you've heard from the Directors Guild of Canada and the Writers Guild of Canada that the Copyright Act should be amended so the screenwriter and the director are jointly named as the author of an episode of a television show or a film. That change, in my view, is not only unnecessary but would severely damage a producer's ability to monetize, license and otherwise exploit an audiovisual work.
Any suggestion that such an amendment would not disrupt the business of making films is wrong; it would completely upend the work we need to do to make a show. Producers and the guilds long ago worked out these issues in our labour agreements, and there is no need to implement a workaround to those agreements now. Infusing the banking and orderly marketplace with a multiplicity of copyright owners who cannot be tracked or are unwilling to grant the necessary exploitation rights would be a disaster. The collaboration required to produce a television series makes it completely different from dealing with the sole author of a novel or the composer of a song.
Producers hire and work closely with all key creative roles. As I just described, we work with screenwriters to turn ideas into scripts; we hire directors to help turn scripts into projects; we hire performers, production designers, composers, musicians, editors and crews to help us shape the project and bring our collective vision to the screen. Everyone has an important role to play, and we deeply value their creative efforts, but it is the producer who brings all these individual creative elements together and takes a project from an idea or concept to the screen and then takes it into the marketplace.
When it comes to TV, rights ownership and exploitation are the foundation of our business models. We are constantly developing new IP by using company resources as that important seed money. In order to have a company of size and scale—one that is able to compete on the international market and get our shows seen—producers must own the copyright in these shows.
It is impossible to be a viable production company without having a robust development slate of potential new projects. Frankie Drake provides a very good example of this. We were approached by CBC to develop a companion show they could run after Murdoch. Thankfully, we had already been developing the concept of Frankie in-house, so we were able to pivot very quickly to react to that request by the marketplace.
Ownership of copyright by producers is the foundation for remuneration models for artists in creative industries. We invest in development; we bring creative and financial partners together; and we pay artists and creators fairly, both from the budget and from the back-end participation we allow them under our guild agreements.
When it comes to authorship or ownership of an audiovisual work, there is no need to make any changes to the Copyright Act. Producers are—and must continue to be—authors and first owners of the copyright in their TV projects.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I'd be pleased to answer any questions you may have.