Filmmaker's Statement on Bill C-10

Passing this on from, Carl Laudan, a member of the Canadian Fair Media Coalition. Carl's film "Sheltered Life" will be screening at the Cannes Film Festival May 15th at 10am, Palais K theatre.

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Filmmaker's Statement on TV/FILM tax credit content of Bill C-10

I'm a Westerner (born 'n raised in Vancouver), and I'm one of the few feature filmmakers in this country.

Censorship aside, and content guidelines are just that, this poorly conceived and badly written Bill C-10 deserves to be fixed before becoming law. Now that the Senate has done the job that the government never did and has investigated and heard expert testimony on the economic ramifications, they must amend the Bill to fix what will be a disastrous situation before it's too late. Here's what's wrong:

If Film and Television tax credits are not guaranteed, if the Minister of Heritage is allowed to revoke them for any reason, banks will not loan money on them--even for films about cute bunnies and pro-family-values puppies.

Banks make films possible in this country.  Money for production never really comes up-front from any of our other sources of financing (much of the other financing is 'soft').  The bank-loan against tax credit is the cash we use to *start* filming.  With no cash--no filming.  It's that simple.  No filming--no filmmakers--no films.

I just made my first feature film called "Sheltered Life" here in Vancouver this last summer.  It's playing at Cannes this month with "Perspective Canada Cannes".  We made it for the smallest budget (I can't tell you how much because we're trying to sell it right now, but it was small).  We got investment from Telefilm Canada, BC Film, tax credits, and we still had a gap in our financing that I had to 'plug' with private money.  I was able to cash-flow it because I'm lucky enough to have a father that believes in me enough and has some money in the bank, BUT: without that tax credit being 'bankable', certain financing, I wouldn't have been able to get that loan from my father (via the bank), in other words I wouldn't have been able to make the film.

We only got our first money from Telefilm 4 weeks into shooting a 5 week schedule. This is not unusual.  We got our BC Film money after we finished shooting.  The only way we could start filming was the cash-flow loan based on the tax credits from the bank.  This is how nearly all films are made in this country.  If the tax-credit is revoked for "Sheltered Life" it could bankrupt my entire family.

If bill c-10 goes through I will be leaving Canada, because there will be no way to make films in this country as a Canadian--only Americans will be allowed to make films here.  All the filmmakers I know feel the same way about leaving.

All the labour we hire to make our films will also go away.  Everyone will leave the business or move away.  Only an old core-group of technicians will continue on to work for the Americans.  Eventually, they too will either retire or die.  Then there will be none.  

Keep in mind tax-credits are only based on the labour you pay with cash during the making of a film--deferrals don't count.  It is an economic stimulus to the industry because every dollar we spend on film-labour creates four dollars of economic activity.  Even with the tax credit the government is still making more money than it gives us back.  Contrary to CPC lies, the 'tax money of Canadians' isn't going to waste, nor is it going to the filmmakers.

As a producer and the director of "Sheltered Life", I had to invest all my fees for these services back into the production budget just to get the film made, to complete financing.  Because my fees were deferred we couldn't factor them into our tax credits--labour costs only count based on cash payment.

I only make my fees back if the film makes sales in the market place.  Everyone else gets paid except for the filmmakers.  That's how it works in Canada.  Very, very few films actually are able to pay the fees of the producers or the director or even small portions of them.  We don't benefit directly from the tax credits.  However because of them we are able to employ our casts and crews which are usually large.

On my tiny film "Sheltered Life" we had forty-four people in the production crew, 17 actors, and in post-production we employed another 25 people at least.  Larger films employ many more people than that and put food on the table for at least 100,000 Canadian families a year.

Film and Television production employs Accountants, Lawyers, Artists, Technicians, Actors, IT, Insurance companies and their employees, Banks and their workers, Municipal departments, and many other related service companies and individuals.  Taking away our tax credits takes away employment from all these different elements of our society, and all these different individuals and their families.

Canada's looking at a multi-billion-dollar industry going up in smoke in less than a year.  Canada's going to lose more than 125,000 high-end jobs in that time, and all or many of those workers will be leaving this country with their families, their dreams, their intelligence, and their money. Perhaps the government would know that had they done an economic-impact study, but they didn't.

For more than a month now the Senate has been hearing from people across Canada, people in the film industry, people who will lose their jobs and not be able to support their families because of the clear and obvious threat that Bill C-10's film/tv tax credit review system poses to us all. While the Senate has heard us loud-and-clear, the government and the general population of this country hasn't. So, now we're against the wall. Now we need them to hear.

I'm ready for an election, and I think it right and proper that a government should fall when it tries to censor its artists and destroy the lives of more than 125,000 hard-working citizens and their families.  

Sincerely,

Carl Laudan
Director of "Sheltered Life"
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