Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge speaks to reporters in Ottawa, on Jan. 25.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
After months of frustration from members of the Canadian film community over a lack of communication and clarity from Ottawa over the state of Telefilm Canada, Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge announced on Thursday a $100-million investment in the federal funding agency over the next two years.
“To support Canada’s creative sector better, we made a commitment to Canadians to increase the funding for Telefilm Canada. Today, we’re delivering,” St-Onge said in a statement. “This investment is essential to maintain the positive impact of Telefilm and to enable its modernization and its overall support for our feature film sector. Our country needs a strong and vibrant industry to ensure that Canadians can continue to access high-quality audiovisual content that is made and owned by them and seen and experienced by all of us.”
In 2021, the Liberal Party announced that Telefilm would receive $105-million in new funds over three years, part of Justin Trudeau’s election promise to permanently increase the agency’s budget.
Yet as the clock wound down on that initial pledge, which was set to expire at the end of March, members of the country’s screen-sector organizations expressed dismay that Telefilm remained operating in an air of uncertainty.
Quebec’s film producer organization, Association québécoise de la production médiatique (AQPM), issued a statement this past November after Ottawa failed to include an update on Telefilm in its 2023 Fall Economic Statement, noting that the tenuous state of the agency’s funding could “jeopardize the employment of thousands of producers, professionals and artisans who depend on it.”
For producers, it was as much an issue of time as money. Most feature films in this country shoot during the summer months, requiring approval from Telefilm before the spring in order to lock down talent, crews and locations. With executives at Telefilm unsure of how many productions they could support until now, feature films that were seeking funds have effectively been held in a state of limbo.
Citing the success of such recent Telefilm-supported features as BlackBerry, Bones of Crows and Simple comme Sylvain (The Nature of Love), Heritage Canada said that the new investment would support 40 to 60 films per fiscal year, help maintain more than 183,000 full-time jobs in the sector and contribute $20.3-billion to the country’s GDP.
In Telefilm’s most recent annual report, the organization said it administered $158.7-million in funding support over the course of 2022/23, a 16 per cent increase from the previous year, which saw the industry hobbled by the aftereffects of the pandemic.
“We welcome this news with enthusiasm, as Telefilm Canada continues to champion the industry that is passionately dedicated to the advancement of Canadian and Indigenous cinema,” Julie Roy, executive director and chief executive of Telefilm, said in a statement. “We extend our gratitude to the Government of Canada and the Department of Canadian Heritage for their collaboration, as well as their timely and essential contribution to our sector, especially as the industry is gaining momentum and mobilizing its efforts to remain viable and competitive.”
The Telefilm news arrives on the first day of the Prime Time conference in Ottawa, an annual three-day event held for members of the country’s screen sector, organized by the Canadian Media Producers Association.
Barry Hertz