CHER Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON CANADIAN HERITAGE

COMITÉ PERMANENT DU PATRIMOINE CANADIEN

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, October 22, 1998

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[Translation]

The Chairman (Mr. Clifford Lincoln (Lac-Saint-Louis, Lib.)): I would like to begin the October 22, 1998 meeting of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are conducting a study of Canadian culture.

[English]

Today we're very privileged to hear witnesses from the National Film Board in the persons of Mrs. Sandra Macdonald, government film commissioner and chairperson; Mrs. Barbara Janes, director general of the English program;

[Translation]

and Ms. Lyette Doré, who is the Director of Corporate Affairs.

[English]

Mrs. Macdonald, I should apologize. We have a bill in front of the House, the magazine distribution act, which is now undergoing second debate. So some of our members are tied up in the House at the moment, but others will be coming in as you proceed.

The floor is yours.

Ms. Sandra Macdonald (Government Film Commissioner and Chairperson, National Film Board): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Good morning, gentlemen—I see no ladies at the moment. My name is Sandra Macdonald. I am the government film commissioner and chairperson of the National Film Board of Canada. The chairman has already introduced you to my colleagues, Barbara Janes and Lyette Doré.

[Translation]

Before assuming her present position as head of English- language production and marketing across Canada, Ms. Janes served in a range of production, distribution and marketing capacities with the National Film Board in Montreal, Halifax and Vancouver. She is therefore very well equipped to discuss with you any matters you may wish to pursue with respect to the Canadian production and distribution scene over the past 25 years.

Ms. Doré is responsible, among other things, for management of the NFB's film collection of some 9,000 titles, which includes ensuring the preservation of a major part of Canada's audio-visual heritage, managing the Board's copyright assets, providing access to NFB films to Canadians across the country, and developing new distribution opportunities via the Internet. Before joining the Board last year, Ms. Doré served in many senior capacities in various federal departments. Of particular value to the Board is her experience as the former Director General of Official Languages at the Department of Canadian Heritage, as well as her legal background.

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Before coming to the Board three years ago, I myself worked in a variety of arenas related to the cultural industries. I was a partner in an independent production company in the 1970s. In the 1980s, I joined the Department of Communications, where I was the Senior Film Policy Advisor during the period when most of the programs currently administered by Telefilm were created, and when many of the most heated issues relating to film emerged. I was subsequently Director of Regulatory Policy in the Broadcasting Policy Branch during the period when the current Broadcasting Act was being drafted and working its way through Parliament (twice). In the 1990s, I spent two years as Director General of Television at the CRTC and three years as president of the CFTPA, the independent producers' association, before joining the NFB in 1995.

[English]

I know your committee has embarked on a broad exploration of federal cultural policy and that your interests extend beyond the particulars of the NFB's current activities. I gave you a bit of our personal background simply to indicate that we have among us a fairly comprehensive knowledge and experience of the federal government's involvement in the audio-visual sector in Canada over the last 25 years, and that we are certainly at your disposal to address general issues of cultural policy, in addition of course to the specific role the NFB has played in the past, plays today, and might play in the future.

As I'm sure you know, the National Film Board is one of Canada's oldest federal institutions, having been created in 1939. The board has been an active producer and distributor of films and other forms of audio-visual expression in the public interest, as our mandate directs, since that time. The particular form that expression has taken has varied over the years, depending on the technology available at the time and the needs of Canadians as they were perceived at any given moment.

Our agency predated television by some 15 years. Therefore newsreels for screenings in theatres and community halls were an important part of the board's work in the early days. Materials for education and learning were also an important part of the board's program from the beginning and continue to be to this day. Our world-famous animation studios began by conveying important messages for the war effort, and have continued through the years to convey many serious messages wrapped up in shiny, attractive packages.

Reflecting the range and diversity of Canadian society, sometimes warts and all, has been the essential mandated task of the board from the beginning. Canada's well-justified fame in the world of documentary can trace its roots and much of its continued vigour to the board.

The NFB made the first Canadian feature films of the post-war era, and over the years has produced or co-produced nearly 400, including many classics such as Mon oncle Antoine, The Company of Strangers, Le Déclin de l'empire américain, and The Boys of St. Vincent. We decided to stop making fiction features a few years ago, for reasons we can discuss later if you are interested.

The board has pioneered many developments in cinema, including the style that came to be known as cinéma-vérité, large-screen formats such as IMAX, and computer animation. Many of the visual effects that dazzle us today are the children and sometimes the great-grandchildren of experiments conducted at the board in the 1970s.

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Today our research focus is the Internet, both as a vehicle for delivery of productions we've made in the past and for a new generation of productions designed specifically for the web.

[Translation]

Obviously, the milieu in which the Board operates has changed greatly over the decades. Television arrived; independent production arrived; the society changed almost beyond recognition. The Board is constantly adjusting and refining its interpretation of its mandate according to the circumstances and needs of our time and place.

Our Annual Report for the fiscal year 1997-98 is being tabled in Parliament today—or perhaps it was yesterday—and the clerk will distribute copies to you. It gives you an overview of the activities of the NFB today.

I point out at the beginning of the report that as a public producer with a mandate to produce films "in the national interest", the National Film Board of Canada has a special responsibility and a special challenge. Our productions often deal with difficult and controversial topics. We make it our particular mission to give voice to those Canadians whose voices are seldom heard—aboriginal people, people of colour, new Canadians from a variety of origins, Canadians from parts of the country seldom seen on the screen—and to do so in both official languages. As a matter of principle, we also make a significant proportion of our films with new talent and in experimental forms. All of these preoccupations operate within the overarching goal of making films which are notable for their excellence, relevance and innovation.

Once again in 1997-98, the NFB completed more than 100 new in- house productions and co-productions, not counting versions of different lengths and in other languages, on topics across the spectrum of Canadian life. The details of those titles appear in the report. Once again, our productions aim to serve a broad range of Canadian audiences, from the general public, with films like The Game of Her Life about the odyssey of Canada's national women's hockey team to reach the Nagano Olympics, to very specifically targeted audiences with productions like The Nitinaht Chronicles about one Native community's long journey towards healing the wounds of child sexual abuse. Productions for young audiences, including a number of interactive projects, were also a highlight of 1997-98, as they are every year. Particularly notable were our prize-winning Website The Prince and I/Le Prince et moi, where tens of thousands of young Canadians became friends of the Prince and increased their reading and spelling skills along the way, and the CD-ROM Making History: Louis Riel and the North-west Rebellion of 1885, which won the prestigious Best Interface Design Award at the 4th Annual Digital Media Awards.

On the subject of awards, 1997-98 was another banner year for the NFB. A total of 143 international awards and honours were accorded to NFB productions and co-productions.

[English]

We are proud of these results, since fiscal 1997-98 was the third year of the budget reduction exercise that affected the NFB, as it did most federal departments and agencies. During the year, we were operating with a parliamentary appropriation some 28% lower than during our pre-cut norm. Nevertheless the number and quality of titles released was maintained.

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In large part, on the production side, this result was achieved through administrative efficiencies. In fact comparative studies we have done indicate that the portion of the budget of an NFB documentary, for example, devoted to overhead—that is, the costs that do not appear on the screen—is typically lower than a similar private sector production supported with public funds.

In addition to its role as a public producer, the NFB also has the mandate to distribute its productions. The preoccupations that inform our production choices, which we consider central to our mandate to interpret Canada to Canadians and the world, pose challenges in finding the most appropriate and effective avenues for reaching our intended audiences.

The diversity of our production means we must tailor our distribution strategies almost case by case. We are not a broadcaster; we must therefore forge alliances with broadcasters to reach television audiences. We do not operate our own cinema circuit; we must therefore find cinema partners. We do not run retail outlets; we consequently must seek out and work with a variety of private distribution and marketing companies to place our productions in the most appropriate venues for the viewers we hope to reach. We do operate our own well-established network for distribution to schools and institutions, serving both Canadian and foreign clients via the Internet, direct mail, and a 1-800 telephone service.

One of the great challenges we have faced in recent years in dealing with our significant budget cuts has been to maintain or even increase the effectiveness of our distribution activities while reducing costs as much as possible.

The NFB's marketing and distribution personnel have risen to the challenge by making 1997-98 the year that more Canadians and non-Canadians saw an NFB production than ever before, at the lowest net cost in our history. A conservative estimate of the total audience for NFB films shown on Canadian television during last year is 120 million.

While the number of viewings of video cassettes is difficult to estimate, we know that more than a quarter of all audio-visual holdings in Canadian educational institutions are NFB productions. A study we commissioned recently to attempt to evaluate the usage of these educational holdings arrived at a figure of some 14 million annual viewings. NFB videos for the home consumer market were rented or borrowed more than 246,000 times from public libraries during the last year.

Approximately 3 million Canadians saw an NFB film, most often an animated short or an IMAX film, in a cinema. More than 1 million people visited our web site. NFB films, including IMAX titles, were sold in 110 countries around the world, with notable new clients in Latin America and Japan.

Foreign sales were a profit centre for the NFB again last year, while domestic distribution, including the labour-intensive educational and institutional markets, came close to cost recovery. When we consider that three years ago this activity had a cost-revenue gap of approximately $7 million, the 1997-98 results look even more impressive.

[Translation]

In addition to its role as a public producer and distributor, the National Film Board of Canada, now 59 years old, is the custodian, through its film collection, of a very significant part of Canada's audiovisual history. Preserving this collection, and rendering it acceptable to Canadians, is a role the NFB takes very seriously. Even with budget constraints, we have continued to invest in the support systems which protect the physical elements of our productions, and those which allow us to retain adequate distribution rights. Meantime, the transfer of the collection to laser discs for electronic consultation has now passed the three- quarters point, and early trials on distribution via Internet herald a whole new era of accessibility for this important piece of Canada's heritage.

All public institutions have been under intense pressure in recent years to do more with less; to balance ever more challenging competing demands; to be more accountable, both in terms of process and in terms of results. We at the National Film Board of Canada have confronted these pressures along with all our colleagues in public service. Our report outlining our activities for the fiscal year 1997-98 is witness to our efforts. We believe we have risen to the challenge.

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[English]

In the interest of time, and because I know your preference is to have more of an exchange of views on a presentation, this concludes my opening remarks. However, in the interest of encouraging a lively exchange, I have taken the liberty of setting out a few thoughts on some, by no means all, of the issues that have troubled me the most in Canada's audio-visual policy over the years. I've asked the clerk to circulate those to you, so I think you all have copies of that additional short document.

These comments don't represent an institutional position on the part of the NFB and they are not supported by charts and graphs, but they are the product of more than 25 years of my trying—as a producer, both public and private; as a policy analyst; as a regulator; and as a lobbyist—to improve the audio-visual offerings available to Canadians and the climate for creation in this country. I offer those to you, for what they're worth. Maybe you would like to discuss them.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mrs. Macdonald.

I was very struck by the figure you pointed out of 120 million Canadians who see the NFB productions on television every year. It's remarkable. That means the NFB has an ongoing and very relevant place in our lives.

It's really important for us to see how the NFB, in your eyes, would fit into the future landscape of the cultural milieu, so I'm very grateful that you've circulated your own thoughts to help our discussion.

I'd like to ask the members, starting with Mr. Mark, to put their questions to you.

Mr. Inky Mark (Dauphin—Swan River, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for coming before the committee. Let me applaud the NFB for the great job they've done despite cutbacks. We always talk about the invasion of American popular culture, and you seem to have found a way of dealing with it.

My questions are based on your success story. What I'd like to know is, do you believe you need to continue this direction of promotion versus protection? As you know, we have a bill before the House today that basically protects the print industry, so that's one question I'd like to ask you.

The other one is related to the same topic but on the issue of the Internet. We know the next great stage will be the Internet. Because you use the Internet and it appears you have great expectations through the Internet, should governments control it?

Ms. Sandra Macdonald: First of all, on the question of promotion versus protection, I'm going to give you a personal view. I believe that measures of protection will become less and less sustainable. We are seeing it.

If you look at my additional notes, which I wrote to be provocative, one of the issues I raise there is the question of how we focus on the goal that I think we all believe to be the essence of our cultural policy, which is to ensure that Canadians have a knowledge of their country, the people in it, and how we relate to each other; have a sense of pride in their country and in the accomplishments of its creators; and also, to the degree that the audio-visual world, but also publishing and others, can help this, have the education, skills, and tools they need to survive in the very demanding world we live in.

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My personal view is that while the tools of protection we have concentrated on very much for the last 20 years in cultural policy are becoming harder and harder to sustain, the same is not true of the tool we always had, which we put in place to create the CBC in 1932, to create the NFB in 1939, and to create virtually everything else since: the capacity to ensure that the resources are available for Canadians to make the things Canadians need.

One of the things we know—certainly we know it in information programming—is that Canadians devour Canadian information programming. They greatly prefer it to any other possible choice. So the issue isn't whether Canadians want it and need it; it's how we finance making sure there's enough of it.

Similarly, in the area of materials for learning, education, and self-expression, we are always able to put resources at the disposal of the people who make these things.

The question of whether or not you're going to be able to create what in broadcasting terms we tend to refer to as “shelf space” is another matter. In fact the problem begins to shift as shelf space becomes not only harder to provide but also less meaningful, because the Internet, as an example, is virtually limitless in terms of shelf space.

So the issue becomes, first of all, how to make the material—which is usually a question of financing—and then how to make sure Canadians know it is there, because we know that if they know it is there, they will seek it out and use it. For your first question, that's how I would respond.

As to the Internet, the concept of attempting to regulate the Internet in the way we regulated broadcasting is simply not feasible. And even if it were feasible, I personally can't see how attempting to regulate, say, content on the Internet would survive a charter challenge under freedom of expression. I don't believe it would meet the test. Others who are more expert in the legal dimensions than I might respond to this.

Mr. Inky Mark: Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

[Translation]

Mr. Dumas, do you have any questions?

Mr. Maurice Dumas (Argenteuil—Papineau, BQ): When I hear people talking about the National Film Board, all kinds of memories come back to me. Of course, I remember the studio in Ville Saint- Laurent and films such as Le Déclin de l'empire américain and Mon oncle Antoine, which both won a number of awards. I also remember La Chaise, The Chair, which was the work of a famous film-maker whose name unfortunately escapes me for the moment. I also remember Maurice Blackburn, who was in charge of music at the National Film Board.

On page 2 of your brief, you say:

We decided to stop making fiction features a few years ago, for reasons which we can discuss later if you're interested.

I would like to know what these reasons were.

You also mentioned budget cuts. How large were these cuts?

[English]

Ms. Sandra Macdonald: Let me just answer that one first. It's very simple.

[Translation]

In 1995, our annual budget, which was made up of parliamentary appropriations and revenue earned on the market, was $90 million. This year, it is approximately $65 million; of this amount, $10 million come from market revenues and $55 million come from parliamentary appropriations. This is a very large cut, approximately 30%. We had to slash our staff levels by half.

I'll ask my colleague, Barbara Janes, who has worked at the Board for 25 years and who was there when all the films you mentioned were produced, to tell you a few things about the problems of producing fiction features given the current situation, and the reasons why we decided to restrict ourselves to our initial genres, documentaries and animation, at least for the time being.

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Mr. Maurice Dumas: Before the lady answers my question—

The Chairman: Let Ms. Janes answer the question. Then I will give you more time.

Mr. Maurice Dumas: That's fine. Thank you.

Ms. Barbara Janes (Director General, English Program, National Film Board): It's a pleasure to answer that question, because I think it's a very important one. There's no denying that the Board played an important role in developing the Canadian fiction film industry at the very beginning. We created the foundation, so to speak, for all the film-makers who have made their mark in this field since that time, including Denys Arcand and Claude Jutras.

At one time, the federal film policy was such that enormous amounts of money were available to produce all kinds of fiction features in Canada. Among other things, Téléfilm Canada was set up and given a rather large budget to fund such feature films. There were other sources of funding as well. At that time, the board lost some of its influence over feature films. Furthermore, because of the budget cuts that Ms. Macdonald mentioned a few moments ago, we had to make some decisions. When we learned that our budget would be cut by approximately 30%, we looked at the environment that we work in and we asked ourselves what would be the best thing for the Board given the current circumstances. There still was lots of funding for fiction features, but there was less and less money available to produce documentaries or to do animation.

After long discussions, we decided that if the Board had to make some difficult decisions, it was more important for us to continue our efforts in the area of documentaries and that we support this kind of film, which is not as commercial in nature as fiction features. Perhaps we had to let others take on the responsibility of working in the area of fiction features. Of course, we were very sorry to have to make that decision because we certainly liked fiction. It wasn't that we thought that fiction features weren't important, but we just had to make some tough choices and focus our efforts on the area where the needs were the greatest.

Ms. Sandra Macdonald: If you don't mind my adding one other thing, I'd just like to specify that a large proportion of the Board's production is educational material for young people. No other federal institution was working in that area, and we are almost the only source of funding for that kind of thing. One of our decisions was to continue working in this area. We looked at the universe of all Canadian production, and we decided that fiction, be it feature films or television series or other formats, was receiving relatively good support from the federal government, while other genres would be seriously threatened if we, who represent the very foundation of such activity, were to disappear from this environment.

The Chairman: Mr. Dumas, you can ask a short question.

Mr. Maurice Dumas: I just wanted to pass on Ms. Tremblay's apologies. She can't be here this morning. She has to prepare for question period, since she will be acting as Deputy Leader owing to Mr. Gauthier's absence. I can't really say that I'm replacing Ms. Tremblay, because she's irreplaceable.

Some members: Oh, oh!

The Chairman: You've done very well so far, Mr. Dumas.

[English]

Mr. Muise.

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Mr. Mark Muise (West Nova, PC): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Let me start by thanking our guests today. It was a great presentation. The National Film Board is very valuable and has a special place in our hearts. CBC certainly does as well, but this is another aspect that is to me equally important.

You made reference earlier to the fact that we're working on developing a cultural policy and it's a rather daunting task. Most times that I think about it in any great detail, I get almost overwhelmed by the whole thing, because it is huge. You have to pick and choose some of the important points in it.

From your unique and interesting position at the NFB, I was wondering if you could tell me what you would like to see in a cultural policy that would help culture in Canada. That's just an opening question, and then I have a couple more.

Ms. Sandra Macdonald: In the additional pages you have there, I've raised a few—

Mr. Mark Muise: I haven't had a chance—

Ms. Sandra Macdonald: I know. I've raised a few points that I consider very important. And I tried to talk about things that didn't necessarily involve spending any more money.

Something that would be constructive to talk about at length, especially with respect to the cultural industries, is whether we have been following the right paradigm in how we support them. Although they're all different, as you know, and the level of support they get from the government varies a great deal, in fact most of them, when they're making anything that's distinctively Canadian, are very far from economically self-sufficient. In fact most universities and most symphony orchestras are more self-sufficient than the cultural industries.

So it might be a useful exercise to separate out what measures we're focusing on as industrial, which is simply to say, job creation and so forth. This is good; there's nothing wrong with this. But it is not the same thing and doesn't arrive at the same result as things that are focused on culture.

So the question I ask is, should we change the method we use for financing these things from looking at who makes it, which is based on what your passport is and where your company is located, to what's in it—what does it say? I suggest this has the potential to take us further toward our cultural goals than some of the measures we've used in the past.

Another thing I raised was the question of whether we could streamline the ways we support things. In the audio-visual field, the way an independent producer has to finance a film is so unbelievably complicated that really the most creative thing about the production very often is the deal. There is no reason for this, because virtually all the money they're spending is ours. It has been put at their disposal by one instrument or another of the government, and we have all of these convoluted rules by all these various agencies and departments that say, “Well, you can do this, but you have to do it this way” and “You can do that, but you have to do it that way.” Things don't line up. Producers spend their whole time trying to figure out how to do this and that, and it costs the creation. We pay that price, if no other.

The other thing of course is that we pay for the administration of all of those things.

So, as often happens in one of the documentaries we might co-produce, the co-production partner has brought in seven different sources of financing. They are all, one way or another, created by governments, and therefore seven sets of decision-makers reviewed this thing. Their rent was paid; their salaries were paid.

I offer a couple of views there. My suggestion is, surely we could find a way to have one or two decision-makers and take the money from the administration of the others and put it back in the pot to make more things. That's another point I made.

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A third point is that very often, apart from the NFB and the CBC—now I'm talking about the audio-visual field, because I know it's different in others—the things we make disappear completely, without a trace, after a rather short period of time. The producer generally only buys the copyrights for a few years. They give those rights to a distributor for a few years. Once the initial period lapses, usually nobody re-buys the rights, the distribution agreement is gone, nobody knows where the thing is, the negatives are left in a lab someplace where sometimes they just get thrown out, and these things for which we collectively have paid enormous sums of money disappear off the face of the earth.

So I suggest that at the minimum, for anything that has federal government money in it, directly or indirectly, there should be a compulsory deposit of a copy with the National Archives or another appropriate custodial institution. That should include not just the physical copy but the right for it to be viewed on location or with the proper restrictions so that it doesn't compete with commercial distribution, and it should be allowed to be made available for retrospectives and for festivals if no other copy can be found.

The board actually has all its films, and they are available to people, but private sector films are a different story. A few years ago, Telefilm encountered this situation: the Beaubourg in Paris decided to do a big retrospective of Canadian feature films, and they were going to do 25. None of these private sector films was more than 25 years old. It took three years to track down a useable copy and to individually do the detective work, re-buy, and trace the rights so the thing could be shown. In almost every case, nobody knew where there was a copy, nobody knew where the negative was, and certainly nobody knew what the situation was with respect to the rights any more.

These are not old films, and these are our most famous films. For all intents and practical purposes, a normal citizen would have no way of getting at these things. I personally think that's dreadful.

That was another one. What was my fourth?

Mr. John Godfrey (Don Valley West, Lib.): Priorities.

Ms. Sandra Macdonald: Oh, yes, priorities. Well, that's the one where I really tossed a balloon up in the air and said it's your problem.

One of the interesting things is that our cultural policy in this country has never operated according to a master plan. It's been the accretion of different things that were done at different points for different reasons. Every decade had its enthusiasms, and they came in and sat alongside the enthusiasms of the previous decade.

In the early years, as I mentioned, it was information programming; it was news; it was material for learning. That was the early mandate of both the CBC and the NFB. In the 1950s those public institutions got involved in drama. Then we started having the independent production sector come along in the 1970s, and once again, their preoccupation was very largely drama. In private sector production, almost all of the money we spend in this country is on dramatic programming.

My question simply was, across all of the activities we support, whether it's publishing or performing arts or heritage institutions, are we looking at the whole picture and making sure that we're trying to have a respectable balance among the types of programming, to serve all the needs of Canadians? Their information needs are as important as their entertainment needs. The needs in support of learning, whether in schools or elsewhere, are very important.

It was a caution to say that any time we're looking back over the terrain that we willy-nilly have created, we have to be conscious of the fact that we're often led along by the enthusiasms of the moment. We should be prudent about not losing sight of our other duties, even if they're less glamorous and perhaps less the things that are lobbied for, because frequently the things that are most important are the things that are least lobbied for. So that's another issue.

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The Chairman: I'm grateful to Mr. Muise for having set you on the path, because you showed how worth while it is for us to have witnesses here to give us ideas. You articulated so well some ideas that are extremely important and useful to us in our work.

Mr. Bonwick.

Mr. Paul Bonwick (Simcoe—Grey, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Those were some terrific ideas. Very well done, Mr. Muise.

I just wanted to pass along my comments on something I wasn't going to touch on, and that is protection versus promotion. These are my opinions. I believe it's not an either/or when it comes to protection or promotion. It's not a hard decision where you say it's one or the other. I'd suggest there's a role for government to play in both. One merely has to look at the size of the market to the south of the border versus our ability to promote our market north of the border. There's a responsibility for the government to play a role in both areas.

We can't look at protection versus promotion as we do with a product such as a computer or a car, because we're dealing with something that is part of our culture, part of what we are. It requires a balanced approach, with both ideas being involved.

More specifically on your report, thank you. It helps us understand and appreciate the enormous importance the NFB plays in communicating the Canadian story both in Canada and abroad. I'm wondering if you might entertain one of my suggestions and then perhaps talk more specifically about some of the ideas you might have on how we could play a role. You provided some exceptional ideas that I had not heard in the past.

This may be a small thing, but when I was a student in the public school system in Canada, it seems to me a fairly decent amount of time was afforded in the classroom to watching Canadian films. I remember when I was going to school, they'd wheel in the big carts with the old Beta vision, or they would tune in the cable, because at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, a Canadian film was being played. I don't hear my kids saying anything about Canadian films being played in the classroom any more.

Although jurisdictionally speaking we don't set the curriculums in the schools, with respect to intergovernmental relations, it's certainly one way we could possibly encourage more accessibility as part of the curriculum.

It happened regularly when I went to school. The film would come in or the TV would go on and some sort of good Canadian film would be played, which was either part of what I am or in turn part of what my parents or their parents were. I am wondering what your views are on how we might encourage that kind of reinstallation in the school system.

And as I say, secondly, I'd be interested in hearing more specific ideas. The compulsory deposit was a very good point and something I had never considered, as part of the committee, and I've made note of it. I'd be interested in your comments.

Ms. Sandra Macdonald: First of all, perhaps I'll say a word or two about the whole protection-promotion thing. Then I'm going to ask Barbara Janes to talk a bit about the evolution over the years of use of material in the schools. She's much closer to that than I. And I'm going to ask Lyette Doré to talk to you a bit about the work we're now doing on electronic distribution, particularly to schools.

On the issue of protection and promotion, I certainly don't mean to suggest for a second that we should abandon protection. My suggestion was that its effectiveness is more or less bound to diminish, for a whole variety of reasons. They aren't all related to trade disputes and multilateral agreements; many of them are simply technological.

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So if we're going to be forward-thinking in terms of policy, we want to make sure that as the effectiveness of regulation and control decreases, we find some way to compensate for that. That is where the importance of promotion gains an ascendancy.

I also mentioned in my notes that in my opinion, if we were to focus on the content more than on which people are receiving support, most of the trade disputes we've had over the last decade would just vanish like smoke, because what we're doing that our neighbours object to, particularly our American neighbours, is we are not according national treatment.

My view is, should an American ever come up with something that looks like a really distinctively Canadian project—and I give an example of a situation I confronted at the CRTC.... I had to actually certify a production as 100% Canadian because it had the 10 points. It was a production called Top Cops. It was all about American policemen, and its primary outlet was CBS.

At the same time, one of our broadcasters was playing Never Cry Wolf, which was a Disney production. As far as I personally was concerned, I loved Never Cry Wolf and I thought it was one of the more quintessentially Canadian things I'd seen that year. But in terms of the points, not one point.

And I said it to the producers at the time. The ones who made Top Cops came to see me at the time, because I was very upset about the 150%, and I said, “If I had discretion, if I weren't bound by these rules, I'd give Canadian content to Never Cry Wolf. I wouldn't hesitate for a minute.” And I think Canadians would think that was a logical thing to do.

But how many of those do you find in a decade or a generation—three? So the dangers we might expose ourselves to by going down that road don't seem to me that enormously terrifying.

I'm going to ask Barbara to talk to you a bit about the role of films in the educational milieu.

Ms. Barbara Janes: A number of factors have influenced the degree to which audio-visual is still used in the classroom.

One is changes in educational philosophy over a period of time. In the 25 years I've been at the Film Board, it's gone through a variety of cycles. There was a period when audio-visual was very high-priority, and then there was a tightening up in the system, partly because people felt that children were not getting the basics enough. There were also also budget compressions in the educational sector, which made audio-visual seem less attractive, especially in the days of 16 millimetre, when the cost of a 16 millimetre print of a film was extremely high.

The introduction of video and the video cassette, which is a low-cost format, provided us at the Film Board an opportunity to be more present in the classroom than we ever had been before. In the days of 16 millimetre distribution, it was a very costly kind of distribution. The video boom allowed us in fact to adopt a policy purposely aimed at multiplying the number of cassettes available in education across Canada in a way we never had before.

To do that we decided we would price ourselves at the very low end of the spectrum to ensure that schools could afford to purchase NFB films for classroom use. I'm happy to say that has succeeded. Despite the fact that the overall sales in the educational market have diminished over the years, the Film Board has maintained its position very well. I would say, in a combination of English and French, we probably sell about $1 million worth of video cassettes to the schools in Canada. At a unit cost of only perhaps $25 each, that's a lot of video cassettes.

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The feedback we get from the educational sector is consistently that our material is an extremely important part of their programs.

What's happening at the moment is that of course the shift, as in every other aspect of life, is going from linear media into computer-based. The place of computers in the classroom is increasing very quickly, and as kids are becoming more proficient in computers at home and outside the classroom, they're bringing those kinds of expectations into the classroom as well.

In line with that, a few years ago we decided we had to branch out from doing our traditional linear media for educational use into some interactive programming as well. So part of our program for young people now does include as well interactive productions. Ms. Macdonald mentioned the CD-ROM on Louis Riel that we released last year and the Internet project called “The Prince and I”.

So we are doing a number of things to try to stimulate the natural inclination children have now to adapt to interactive media and to create some learning experiences that are in tune with that generation.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Ms. Doré.

Ms. Lyette Doré (Director, Corporate Affairs, National Film Board of Canada): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[English]

To build on what has already been mentioned by the commissioner and my colleague, Barbara Janes, we've also embarked on a very interesting project called Ciné-Route, where we will be distributing through the Internet a portion of our collection that is being digitized right now. We have undertaken discussions with colleagues at Industry Canada—with SchoolNet, for example—and also with CANARIE, which operates the CA*net network across the country, as well as with RISQ in Quebec, which provides the backbone.

Through these discussions, we hope to be able to identify and begin a pilot project before the end of the year wherein we would connect about 100 customers—some in the institutional sector, from grade school to universities, and some individuals—to test the system and see how we can have a generalized distribution of our productions of our collection through the Internet.

We are in the midst right now of identifying and making available right away approximately 100 films where there are no issues of rights, because we also have to take into account, as was mentioned before, the whole issue of rights. Right now we'll be able to circumscribe it with the pilot project in Canada. Once we start talking worldwide distribution, we have to address head-on this very complex of rights-holders. In that sense we have also undertaken discussions with some associations representing rights-holders—L'Union des artistes and ACTRA, for example—to try to see if collectively we can find a way to accommodate all the interests at play in this issue.

Ciné-Route is a very promising project, which we will start testing later this year, and we should see the results quite quickly. Through that, if we have this happy marriage between the technology of CA*net and RISQ, for example, our film collection will be able to have general distribution to schools, public libraries, and the consumer market.

Ms. Sandra Macdonald: I might just add—not to leave the impression that this is about to happen, though that dimension of it is—we have had an ongoing practical test that works very well in distance distribution of our films via fibre optic cable, on demand, with a two-minute delay. That's been operating now for two years in Quebec. We're linked to certain universities there. Just last week we started an on-demand service, with 500 of our titles, in St. John's, Newfoundland. That's also via a fibre optic network. This is easy and practical. Via the Internet is trickier, because of the various ways people get on the Internet.

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The Chairman: Mr. Godfrey.

Mr. John Godfrey: Well, my goodness, what an exciting presentation. I want to first of all congratulate you for doing something that I've never seen anyone running a quasi-governmental organization do, which is to provide a provocative discussion paper that is distinct from what you have to do to defend your house and explain what you're up to. It's a really interesting paper, and I commend it to my colleagues.

I've gone through it, and you raise hugely provocative questions, including ones we've been dealing with, such as distinctions between market and non-market. We've been looking at that, and suddenly you inform that discussion with this business of cultural versus industrial, or the points are not the point. That's very important.

I know you were given a grid that Mr. Blais drew up, which we are attempting to use to come to terms with a sectoral approach to cultural policy.

I notice just one thing, Mr. Blais. This may be a housekeeping matter. I would actually add in your linkage and chain, particularly in light of what Ms. Macdonald said, a fifth box in the left-hand column, which would be “Preservation”. I may be talking code here, but I'm working from the briefing notes that were distributed to the committee. If anyone wants a copy, they're available.

We are trying to grid things to understand them better. We have on the one hand creation, production, distribution, consumption, and preservation. If you attempt to think about the past, current, and future activities of the Film Board, it's an interesting way to go at it, and I want your reaction to that. Then we have globalization, technologies, and demographics, and there's this additional notion of market versus non-market.

Particularly in view of the last things you said, if we take an ecosystem view of the world in which you function, it's a dynamic ecosystem that is particularly driven by the technology. This is the classic case of your being in an ecosystem where technology is absolutely crucial.

In that ecosystem, the confusions and overlaps now are just enormous. I list film; television; CD-ROM; Internet, with things such as SchoolNet; cable in the classroom; Ciné-Route; the fact that radio is now being rethought, because it's coming over the Internet and it has visual backup; you threw in CANARIE, which is broad-bandwidth, high-density information between major points in Canada; and the whole issue of copyright, which is now threatened on a worldwide basis by things such as the Internet. That's an extraordinary universe to be dealing with, and if we are attempting to figure out cultural policy for the future, as affected by these new trends, we have to capture all of those elements, because they're now interchangeable. Just listen to the things you were saying there.

You very usefully point out in your first paper the evolution of the role of the Film Board when there was no television. It was the image's complement to the radio, and gradually it had to reconcile itself to television. By the way, I used to be a trustee of the National Film Board, and in my house in Nova Scotia I still have something I owe you: a 16 millimetre projector. That tells you everything about how long ago I was on the Film Board. I don't know; do you still have 16 millimetre projectors?

So as you pick your way through this ecosystem, which you've pretty much alluded to—and some of the other things you talk about are very crucial as we look at film; for instance, the whole point system and all that stuff—I'm trying to identify the evolving role and the gaps you guys are going to continue to fill, given all this swirl of activity, particularly in terms of defending Canadian interests.

I can see an element of content and I can see an element of experimentation, as was the case—but probably, with all respect, is no longer the case—in animation. At one point you were it for animation experimentation. Now a whole bunch of things are going on elsewhere, which you're part of but are no longer dominant in. Is that a question? I don't know what that is. Anyway, it demands a response.

Ms. Sandra Macdonald: I'm getting the drift.

Mr. John Godfrey: Yes, okay.

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Ms. Sandra Macdonald: I know my colleagues have views, and I hope they'll jump in in a minute.

When we were looking at our big budget cuts, we spent a year turning over every stone and fought through asking: “What can we stop doing? What can we do better? What should we invest in for the future and what should we let drop?” We spent enormous time and energy, across the entire institution, with every level of person—the clerk, the producer, the director, the distribution officer, the marketing officer, the people in our offices abroad—talking over where we were going.

The issue of what to do was not hard. The issue of how to do it was really hard. I don't think the board has ever had a problem keeping its eyes on the prize: interpret Canada to Canadians, be where Canadians are everywhere in the country, be with the people who haven't yet found their voice. Those are the next group. The whole integration factor always follows the same path, and you start somewhere. The board always has and always will want to be there. The whole notion of reflecting the life of Canadians as it is lived I think will always be our task, and there's no problem about that.

But within that we have four preoccupations that are the essence of, not our strategy so much as our tactics going forward. That is, we do intend always to have a large proportion of our films made by people who never made a film with us before, those new voices. That role of an incubator, which we've always had, we should always have.

Mr. John Godfrey: Creation.

Ms. Sandra Macdonald: Creation. Developing the filmmakers, developing the new voices, is our special role.

The other thing is obviously we have always taken great care with the works that have been made by the board. Ciné-Route is an example and the collections in the public libraries are examples. Even your 16 millimetre projector is an example.

Mr. John Godfrey: You'll get it back.

Ms. Sandra Macdonald: Making sure that those things that have been made remain available is a vocation for us. We believe in that.

Mr. John Godfrey: Preservation.

Ms. Sandra Macdonald: Preservation and access, access, access. That's a vocation for us.

Also, although, as you say, the board perhaps played a more obvious research and development role in the past, in a way that was simply because it was the only place there was. The fact that we're less visible, because there is so much more around us, doesn't mean we're not doing anything. I'm going to ask Barbara to talk a bit about that.

In fact, to follow your example of animation and visual effects, the interesting thing is, yes, there is a lot of fascinating software evolution creating all kinds of dazzling new effects, and some people are going to get extremely rich on the copyrights of this stuff, but what end is it aimed at? Do we really need better technology to explode things? Are screen explosions the object of our ambition? What end does it serve?

I'd like Barbara to talk a little bit about our studios for what we now call animation children's interactive, because those things are all together. That's an area where in fact we continue to be doing very interesting experimental work.

Also, Lyette mentioned to you the work we're doing on the Internet. I think the Internet is going to be formidable for us in the future, in part because we have all of the pieces to do something really interesting on the Internet, which most others don't, and because it particularly suits one of our most treasured audiences, which is young people in schools.

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Mr. John Godfrey: I have a technical question. Are you making it a priority to digitize everything you're currently doing plus everything you have done in the past? Because that is going to be one of the technical keys to getting onto the Internet, whatever form it takes, right?

Ms. Sandra Macdonald: In fact we've taken a slightly different route. I've been checking around, because at one point people thought this wasn't a smart strategy, but I find that our colleagues in France and England think we made the right choice.

For three or four years now we've been transferring our collection, and we're three-quarters of the way through. But we're not transferring it to a digital medium; we're transferring it to analog laser disc. We chose to do that because the international standards for digitization change quite rapidly. What we can do with an analog laser disc is, when our robot player goes and plays one of those discs, we just send it out through whatever the digitizer of the moment is. Then when they change the digital standard, we don't have to re-digitize all the material; we just send it out through a new machine.

We will stay in that format for the little-used material. Our plan is to digitize and put into a large server—probably not ours, but a commercial one someplace—the most demanded, most popular titles, because our robot server can't handle a very large number of demands for the same title at the same time. But many of the things we have are not frequently requested, so there's no need to do the digital storage element for that. This has been quite a practical strategy for us. But large masses of things are in fact digitized at the moment, as need be for a particular purpose.

The Chairman: Before I ask Mrs. Janes to comment, I'd like to say we are now at 12.25 p.m. We have about half an hour or so left, and I have requests from two other members who want to put questions. So in the interest of time, can we balance our time properly? Thanks.

Ms. Barbara Janes: I'll just add a few things to what Sandra Macdonald said.

The issue of technology in the Film Board is quite interesting really, because few people remember that at one point 16 millimetre film was a new technology. It was, at a certain point.

Actually, as technology changes, our role doesn't really change that much. Technology just allows us to do things in different ways, but basically what we do remains the same in that we create images that have significance and resonance for Canadians and we create creators. As the technology changes, we change the format in which we do that. Whether it's 35 millimetre film, 16 millimetre film, video, digital video, or computer-generated images, we're always doing the same thing. We don't see our essential role changing as a result of technology, just being enhanced and diversified.

You mentioned that the Film Board is no longer the only place for experimentation in animation. For sure there is a much larger animation community than there was when we started, but there are still very few people doing what we do, which is allowing individual artists to experiment—not necessarily technologically experiment, although they do that too, but creatively experiment.

In fact many of the things we do are prototypes. One artist-driven film becomes a prototype. Right now one of the biggest interest we have from the outside is that a number of commercial producers—many of them American, interestingly enough, not Canadian—want to explore our animation collection from the point of view of taking those individual prototypes and expanding them into series.

In fact one of them has already been done. A series called Bob and Margaret has just begun on television in Canada and the U.S.

Ms. Sandra Macdonald: And Germany.

Ms. Barbara Janes: It is a spinoff from Bob's Birthday, the Oscar-winning short we did several years ago. So what we're doing in animation is still significantly different and interesting enough that a lot of people around the world are looking to us as the source of ideas for doing other work.

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In terms of what we're doing in our animation children's interactive program, which we call ACI, I mentioned earlier that we are branching out into computer-generated programming and so on. One of the big things we're looking at doing right now—and actually we've just hired a project director to begin work on it—is to create an NFB web site on Canadian history. It would be available in both official languages and would incorporate material from our collection, which is a kind of audio-visual history of Canada since 1939.

Ms. Sandra Macdonald: And before.

Ms. Barbara Janes: And before, yes. It would also incorporate new productions that would be produced specifically for the web site and so on. This is a very large, five-year project that has had an incredible reception from the history community in Canada and is perhaps one of the most exciting new media things we have done in a long time. So we'll be devoting a large amount of energy to that. It will be one of our major millennium projects in fact, providing the country with a full web site on the history of Canada. That's just one of the things we're doing.

The Chairman: Go ahead, Mr. Mark.

Mr. Inky Mark: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a couple of short questions.

You talked about a sense of balance. Where are you headed in terms of balance between education and entertainment?

The other thing is, have you looked at partnering with public institutions such as CBC? On the marketing and production side, does it make sense to come together?

Ms. Sandra Macdonald: Barbara spoke earlier about the choices we made and the difficult choice to get out of entertainment. In part we did that because entertainment, in our ecosystem, as it were, was relatively well served. The things we do uniquely or particularly weren't very well served elsewhere.

Obviously we pay attention all the time to the ecosystem. If the ecosystem, for example for Canadian production, changed radically and ended up in a situation where there was little or no resource out there for entertainment or it became a problem of balance in the system, if we could play a role, we would definitely go back and review our position, because we do regard ourselves as part of a whole. We are not the whole; we are part. We want to be as constructive as we can in the environment we find ourselves in.

So the issue of entertainment is one where we've always said, if circumstances changed and it were important for us to review our decision on the entertainment front, we would do that. But of course the fact remains that we are now much poorer financially than we were, and entertainment is a very expensive place to be.

In terms of relationships and partnerships, in fact I would say we have more partners than anybody in the audio-visual field. In terms of the CBC, I would say that with respect to English CBC, our relationship with them currently is better than it has ever been. We've had eight or ten programs in very good time slots in the course of the last year, and got extremely good audiences, so that's actually a big step forward. The French side is a little more difficult. They don't really have a tradition of documentaries at Radio-Canada, so it's a little harder for us to deal with them.

We deal with specialty services. We deal with them all. We sell large quantities of programming to Canadian specialty services. We have partners there.

We have production partners. On our English side, about 40% of our titles are co-productions. Our French side is smaller, but still we do co-produce. We co-produce mostly with Canadians but occasionally internationally.

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So we have those partners. We have education partners. We have partners in the school systems. We have many, many partners in institutions. For example, many of our films are aimed at social justice, health, or things like that. For example, just this week we embarked on a project with Veterans Affairs to take our series on caregivers out to all the veterans in the country, through partnership with the Canadian Legion.

The film I mentioned in my first remarks, The Nitinaht Chronicles, about sexual abuse in a native community, is being used by the RCMP and by the Canadian Judicial Council to train judges and police officers to help them be more sensitive to the issues they may confront.

We really value partnerships and we spend an enormous amount of time and energy cultivating them.

Mr. Inky Mark: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Dumas.

Mr. Maurice Dumas: Mr. Chairman, I would like to make one comment regarding the remark that the lady made about the resources that were destroyed at the National Film Board and thus lost. Of course, you're talking about films made within the last 25 years. It took three years to gather all this material for a retrospective of Canadian cinema.

By the way, the same thing happened at the CBC. Someone was talking about the very first drama series that the CBC broadcast. All kinds of material was destroyed, probably because it had been recorded on big reels. I wonder if they weren't destroyed because of a lack of space. Was there also some negligence in monitoring lending? Perhaps the films went out but were not returned. Was there some negligence in that regard, was there some sloppiness? Were some of the administrators not particularly interested in our heritage? Perhaps the films were also destroyed because the film quality had been affected by temperature changes. I just wanted to make that comment. I was really taken aback when I learned that so many things had been destroyed.

Ma father did a film in the 1950s with Maurice Blackburn, which I talked about earlier. I was a folklore film. I doubt wether it's still in your files.

Ms. Sandra Macdonald: I will ask Ms. Doré to answer you.

Ms. Lyette Doré: Thank you. To begin with, I have some good news for you. Nothing that the NFB has produced has been destroyed. If we can get together after the meeting, I will write down the title of the film in which your father was involved. I'm sure we will be able to find it and send you a copy.

Since it's inception, the NFB has always tried to preserve the material produced by it. In recent years, the NFB has also received material from many other organizations. We even have some dating back to the very beginning of the cinema, around 1895. For example, we recently rediscovered many films that were made during the First World War. We are talking with our colleagues in the War Museum part of the Canadian Museum of Civilization with a view to reconstituting these films. We also found the scenarios and we will be able to restage them.

So on our side, nothing in our collection has been destroyed, and we have material from a number of other institutions.

You mention the CBC. The CBC had some problems at a given point in time. It wasn't necessarily negligence. A moment ago you were talking about negligence, or perhaps... What was it?

Mr. Maurice Dumas: Lack of interest.

Ms. Lyette Doré: Lack of interest or something like that. One of the reasons invoked at the time, as you were saying, was the space taken up by the reels. Often they re-recorded over them. However, attempts were made to improve the situation, and we have at the NFB experts who are regularly consulted concerning this by other institutions, including the CBC.

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To get back to your main question, namely, is there a lack of space? Well, we do not have one, because they expanded the vault which enables us to keep material at acceptable temperatures and humidity levels. Here too we consult our colleagues, in particular those in the Cinémathèque québécoise, regularly, and there are some information exchanges and good procedures in this context.

I will try to find the film involving your father. I think it will illustrate the very positive efforts and results on our side of things.

So much for the preservation and conservation aspect. The aspect of accessibility was alluded to a moment ago. It all has to be put in the public heritage in order that Canadians might consult this material in various ways or using various methods of communication.

[English]

The Chairman: Mrs. Macdonald, I would like to thank you very much for appearing today with your colleagues. We have learned a lot.

As you know, we are carrying out this study. It's nearing an end at the moment. We are starting to build a framework to begin drafting a report, and it was really important for us to hear the National Film Board. I'm sorry it came so late.

Part of the discussion we had the other day, when we were looking at a possible framework, centred on the whole question of money and the value of culture, which you have touched on. I think about many new elements, such as the question of how we can provide financing more quickly and effectively than is the case now, as well as the whole question of archives and how we preserve what we have through the maze of copyright, and also this idea of a master plan that balances the various sectors fairly and spreads it among the key elements of information, entertainment, and education.

You and your colleagues have brought us a tremendous amount of useful information, knowledge, expertise, and ideas, so we are extremely grateful to you. This is one of the best sessions we have benefited from. We are really grateful. Thank you very much for coming.

Ms. Sandra Macdonald: Our pleasure.

[Translation]

Ms. Barbara Janes: Thank you.

[English]

The Chairman: The meeting is adjourned.