Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning, members of the committee. I'm very pleased to be with you today.
My name is Richard Hardacre. As your chair said, I'm an actor--that's what I do professionally--so it's my job to make sure you hear me.
I'm a Canadian. I'm the elected president of ACTRA, which is the union representing the interests of performers in film, television, sound recordings, radio, and new media. We have 21,000 members who live and work in every corner of this country. We are English-speaking artists whose performances entertain, educate, and inform the Canadian public and global audiences through the most powerful and effective media that currently exist.
I'll give you a couple of background remarks, if I may, Mr. Chair.
Art in Canada is a serious business. According to Statistics Canada, in 2002 the cultural industries contributed $40 billion to Canada's GDP, employing more than half a million people. The contribution of the culture sector to the Canadian economy amounted to approximately 3.8% of the Canadian GDP in 2002.
The film industry is the third largest within the cultural sector in terms of the GDP; it's worth 9% of culture's contribution to the economy. According to Profile 2007, the film and television production sector was a $4.8 billion business in 2006 in this country, employing more than 125,000 people.
With average earnings of $23,500, artists are in the lowest quarter of average earnings of all occupation groups. This is from the 2001 federal census. Of the 500-plus occupations that are tracked by Stats Can, three-quarters have average earnings that are higher than artists.
Other things to note about artists are that many of us are highly educated; we're largely self-employed, which means we fall outside of government support such as employment insurance; and in the cultural sector, there is a predominance of women.
If I may, I'll talk about the film industry. Film and television production has three main centres in this country: Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. But film and television activity takes place across the country. In fact ACTRA has nine branches, from Newfoundland and Labrador all the way to British Columbia. More than half of ACTRA's membership is based in the Toronto area, which reflects that centre's level of activity, and more than 25% of our members are based in the Vancouver area. We are very mobile. All of us tend to work across the country, when we're fortunate to work. That gives you a sense of the clusters of our population, as far as membership goes.
The film and television business is supported by the federal government in a number of ways, and I'm sure you're aware of them. There are tax credits that encourage production, both domestic productions such as a series like Corner Gas, and the projects that are shot in Canada and mostly originate from Hollywood; we call them “service production” or “foreign production”. That's one of the ways the federal government supports our industry.
Funding of cultural institutions such as Telefilm and the CBC is very important as well. Finally, there is government contribution to the Canadian Television Fund, which is absolutely key to the seed money for production of Canadian television programming.
Government support for the film and television industry is crucial. We live right next to the most pervasive and insistent culture in the world, the United States, so government support is not just an investment in high-quality jobs or high-end industry, it is an investment in our cultural sovereignty, our identity as a nation.
There are four main challenges that face our industry: the crisis in Canadian television drama, the threat of increased foreign ownership of our broadcasters, the impact of the high value of the Canadian dollar, and we have some concerns with HRDC's immigration practices that affect the film and television industry.
I'll start with the crisis in Canadian drama. There's an urgent need to do more for Canadian-content production. Since 1999 we have lived through a precipitous drop in the number of Canadian productions. Being able to tell Canadian stories in the most powerful medium, television, is essential for cultural and economic reasons. We need the federal government to use its authority under the Broadcasting Act to direct the CRTC to impose content and spending requirements on Canadian broadcasters who, after all, are using public airwaves to make substantial private profits. In our opinion they need to pull up their socks and make more drama available on television in prime time when Canadians are watching.
The second point that is a challenge is foreign ownership. That phrase in our industry alone raises the hair on the back of the necks of many Canadians. ACTRA is aware that in the past this committee has come out in favour of relaxing rules around foreign ownership of our media companies. Mr. Chair and committee members, please have no doubt that ACTRA is a strong and vocal opponent to relaxing these foreign content and foreign ownership rules.
We were before the CRTC in November arguing vigorously that the commission must deny the takeover of Alliance Atlantis Communications by CanWest Global because the transaction is financed 64% by the U.S. investment bank, Goldman Sachs. ACTRA and others argued before the commission that this deal goes against the laws in this country, giving an American bank the control of a Canadian broadcaster.
ACTRA held an event in Calgary just last week with our colleagues, a couple of other unions, including the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, and also the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. We launched a campaign called “Our Media is OUR Message: Keep it CANADIAN”. We commissioned an Ipsos Reid poll that showed last week that 82% of respondents, 82% of Canadians, feel it's important for the government to work to maintain and build a culture and identity distinct from that of the United States.
In a few months we will be participating in the competition policy review that is being launched by Red Wilson. You can read more about our position when we file that submission next month.
The third challenge to our industry is the Canadian dollar. The current value of the dollar is a serious threat to this sector of film, television, new media, and commercial production. Making Canadian productions is about half of our industry's work, and the other half is service production, programs, movies, television, commercials, mainly originating from the United States. The effect of the dollar on our industry is quite obvious. In fact, a 2004 industry report pointed out seven factors that affect Canada's competitiveness as a filming location, and of these the most important factor is the value of the Canadian dollar relative to the U.S. greenback. The lower the dollar, obviously the more work is created; the higher the dollar, the less work there is.
Things are adjusting. We're aware that the dollar is getting out of the stratosphere that it was forced into by traders perhaps, but the full impact of the overvalued Canadian dollar will not be felt for us until the middle or the end of 2008. We know that major studios intend to let projects already on the books proceed; that's happening. But they're not planning any new productions due to the dollar value. I'm told that the 800 phone lines to our offices across the country have stopped ringing.
Finally, the other challenging area the government has influence in that affects our industry is immigration. When U.S. productions come to Canada to shoot, we obviously want them to make use of our home-grown talent, our professional performers, as much as they possibly can. Often U.S. producers insist on bringing in American actors even for the smallest roles in their productions. Human Resources Development Canada used to work very closely with our senior staff across the country, with ACTRA and with other unions, to make sure that productions had thoroughly investigated the availability of Canadian performers for these and larger roles. Unfortunately, today HRDC has stopped consulting ACTRA on immigration permits. In the recent past and now, this has had a direct and immediate impact, a loss of jobs for Canadians here at home.
Those are some of the challenges we face in our sector, the film and television industry. But it's not all doom and gloom. It's good to start a day in Ottawa looking at some positive things.
And yes, I'm wrapping up, sir.
We have had some significant successes in recent years. Sarah Polley's film Away from Her--you've perhaps heard of it--starring our own Gordon Pinsent, has been a very big hit at the box office here at home and in the U.S. Other Canadian successes in television are Bon Cop, Bad Cop and Trailer Park Boys, and we're proud of a hit show, Corner Gas. There are many success stories.
What can the government do, and what would we like to tell this committee? Well, there are five things--simple sentences.
First, help Canadian production and Canadian culture. Direct the CRTC to impose spending and exhibition requirements on broadcasters so that they start investing again in Canadian content and putting that content in prime time, when audiences are watching.
Second, introduce income averaging for artists. Artists are taxed unfairly compared with others in our economy because our income fluctuates. We're taxed at an inequitably high rate compared with our average earnings. Whenever we earn money that's greater than poverty wage, the taxes can be quite high. Allow artists to spread this income over a number of years so that they're taxed more fairly.
Third, extend film and television tax credits to cover post-production, and eliminate something that is called, in our industry, the “grind”, where the federal tax credit is assessed after provincial tax credits have been accounted for. It effectively reduces the overall tax credit.
Four, on foreign ownership, the government can do the very best by doing nothing. Please, keep the current limits to foreign ownership of our media companies.