News

This week, in a government building in Gatineau, Que., our federal broadcasting regulator meets to hear arguments from broadcasters, filmmakers, actors, television producers, cable companies and other players in Canada's TV business.

The issue is whether a major financier of Canadian TV programs such as Little Mosque on the Prairie, Corner Gas, The Border, Degrassi, The Guard and The Lens will be split into two separate funds — one to produce programs broadcast on the public networks (CBC, SRC, TVO, Tele-Quebec, SCN and the other provincial educational services), and another for CTV, Global, Rogers and all the private networks and channels.

Who cares and what does it matter?

The regulator is not deciding how much money the Canadian Television Fund puts into these programs, but how it's done. It matters a great deal and goes to the heart of what it means to be Canadian.

The CTF was created in 1995 to provide significantly more financing for Canadian television shows. It is a unique public-private partnership: Half its funds come from a tax on Canadian cable TV companies; the other half comes from Ottawa. In 13 years, it has pumped $2.5-billion into 25,000 hours of Canadian-made television, financing about 25 per cent of these programs' overall cost.

The fund has been a huge success, contributing to the financing of hundreds of home-grown dramas, documentaries, children's programs, reality shows and animation produced by independent filmmakers. The independent companies apply for the CTF funds after they have a broadcast partner for their show. The funds are apportioned to each broadcaster's licensed programs according to the number of Canadians watching that broadcaster's shows the previous year.

The CTF money has made it possible to develop and nurture Canadian filmmakers, actors, producers, musicians and crews in every corner of the country. As a result, Canadian TV gets written and produced in Canada without undue influence from offshore financiers. Like similar funds in Britain, Australia, France, Germany and the Scandinavian countries, the CTF has given birth to several successful Canadian production companies and created thousands of jobs. Without it, we would not have the current hit Canadian TV dramas, children's shows like Life with Derek, or award-winning documentaries like Manufactured Landscapes and The Corporation. The CTF has been a major factor in ensuring that we maintain a Canadian identity and culture in a world increasingly dominated by American TV shows, with their American values, symbols, stars and heroes.

And yet there are powerful forces in Canada who want to destroy the very nature of the Canadian Television Fund — people who feel that too much of its financing has been wasted on Canada-centric publicly broadcast TV shows that have little or no audience beyond our borders, that will never turn a profit and that are watched by few Canadians, even. The argument is that private Canadian cable TV companies should not be forced to help finance programs for public TV. These people (most notably Jim Shaw of Shaw Cable and Pierre Karl Péladeau of Quebecor Media Inc.) argue that they should have the right to determine which Canadian TV shows their taxed profits finance.

They are arguing for a "Two-Tiered" or split CTF, with public and government money financing the public TV shows and private and cable company money allocated to the privately broadcast ones. What happens when a show is broadcast on both types of networks (like CBC and Showcase or SCN/TVO and History TV) or when a show jumps between networks is unclear in this flawed scenario.

With the help of the CTF, private Canadian broadcasters have been prescient in financing many award-winning and popular Canadian TV shows. But the problem with splitting the Canadian Television Fund into two tiers — two solitudes — is that it runs counter to the fundamental spirit of what it is to be Canadian.

We have created a wonderfully successful public-private partnership in many fields. By using the best of the British and U.S. models, we have created a third way of governance and productivity that, despite the need for constant vigilance and tweaking, works very well. Yes, it's imperfect, but our private-public health-care system is the envy of the world. Private-public partnerships finance our energy system, our highways, our education and our arts and culture.

Despite the grumblings, our television system works. Splitting the CTF into two funds and erecting walls between private and public funding and programming would be a huge mistake, destroying what has taken years to create, nurture and flourish.

Peter Raymont is the executive producer of the current CBC drama series The Border and an award-winning producer and director of more than 100 hours of Canadian documentaries, including Shake Hands with the Devil and A Scattering of Seeds: The Creation of Canada.