TORONTO – The new Canada Media Fund (CMF) puts private companies in charge of a "key Canadian cultural fund", worries The Documentary Organization of Canada/l’association des Documentaristes du Canada (DOC).
DOC said in a statement that cable companies have argued in the past that the special levies they collect from Canadians are ‘theirs’, and that they should have the ability to influence the content of programs produced and to spend the money on their own in-house productions. This would effectively give them “full control” over content, copyright and distribution of Canadian programming paid for by public funds.
The statement also expressed concern about the potential of conflicts of interest given that five of the seven member CMF board will be nominated by the fund’s five largest contributors, Bell, Rogers, Shaw, Videotron and Cogeco.
“By controlling the board, cable companies will effectively create the rules for access to the fund. As they themselves control and own a large majority of broadcasters, they are in direct position to financially benefit, to the exclusion of others, from the Canadian Media Fund.”
Documentaries could be shut out of the Fund, the statement continued. Noting that documentaries are no longer listed as a "priority" and will be subject to “a stringent test not demanded from fiction programming” under the CMF, DOC said that documentaries “may be financially pushed to the sidelines” as genre allocations are revised.
DOC is a national non-profit arts service association representing over 850 directors, producers and craftspeople in the documentary community in Canada.
