The Advantages of Being Gerry Schwartz in Liberal Canada's Film Distribution

So you would like to support the Canadian film industry . . .

Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, March 22, 05 -- "The theatres are now majority owned by a Canadian, Gerry Schwartz", a good Liberal, but that had nothing to do with the business advantages, did it?

[. . . . ] Warner Brothers cannot distribute Canadian films in Canada; they can only distribute them outside of Canada. Why is that?


Mr. Douglas Frith: It's the law. That's what we were saying in our brief, that this is a barrier we really should revisit. It stems from, I think, 30 years ago.

If you look at the distribution in the theatres now, it's over 50% Canadian owned. It's Gerry Schwartz; it's Cineplex Odeon. That's Canadian owned. I'm talking about the theatres. The theatres are now majority owned by a Canadian, Gerry Schwartz. As far as I understand, Paramount has put up for sale Famous Players, and I understand that the most interested party is a Canadian as well. So it goes beyond who owns the theatre; it's still a business decision as to how they locate.

Trust me, they're no more generous to American films than they are to Canadian. If an American film doesn't sell enough popcorn on the opening weekend, it's gone by the Tuesday of the following week. It doesn't matter whether it's Canadian, Dutch, German, or American. It's a business decision. [. . . . ]

Ms. Susan Peacock: It's the law. It's policy at CAVCO. It's in the regulations--“regulations” may not be technically the right word--at CAVCO, and I believe Telefilm. I'm not certain about CTF, but I think so. It goes back to a time when, to be blunt, it was to protect Canadian distributors. It was cloaked in rhetoric that suggested that Canadian distributors, of course, would always be motivated first by patriotism and secondly by filthy lucre. That of course is not true. They're in business too.

The 95% is a number that has been making me crazy for about 20 years. First of all, the number floats. It floats from 3% to 5%, depending, and it's often given as the percentage of screen time. I think you said percentage of theatres, but it's a made-up number. Nobody is collecting that data. Nobody has ever collected that data. It's one of the founding myths that informs all discussion of Canadian film policy, and it keeps getting repeated. The Minister of Heritage from time to time puts it in a speech, the Globe and Mail publishes it, the staff of the Minister of Heritage reads it in the Globe and Mail, puts it in a speech, and it just keeps going.

Mr. Douglas Frith: In the mists of time, this has all changed, and Alliance Atlantis is doing exactly what the big, bad, ugly American studios do. They're vertically integrated, and they're there to make money--quelle surprise! [. . . . ]

Has government interfered with normal business to protect good Liberal business to this extent? Or is it just Schwartz' luck?

Get government and government regulation of everything in our lives. Incidentally, I hate the smell of popcorn in theatres, and I would like Canadian films to be readily available if we want to see them. If we don't, that's life and the business will fail. But let us choose.

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