Okay, why don't we get started?
My name is Sara Bannerman.
Welcome to the Communications and Cultural Policy conference run out of McMaster University.
Today is day two. Yesterday, we enjoyed some wonderful keynote talks, a wonderful keynote
talk by Jesse Wente, and a keynote panel on Indigenous Media and Communications policy.
It was a super fun day.
And I'm looking forward today to today's sessions, starting off with Sharon McGowan and Susan
Brinton from Women in Film and Television, Vancouver.
And I'm excited about this talk because Susan and Sharon are behind many of the amazing
advocacy for Women in Film and Television,
many of the position papers that have been submitted to the CRTC over the last number
of years, so some very important voices on behalf of women in film and television.
This afternoon, we also have following the keynote session, some really interesting panels
coming up, including one on engaging in policy proceedings, another on platforms, labour,
and struggles for alternative platform models, and a third on Canadian cultural policy.
Tomorrow, we've got a keynote talk by Edward Greenspon,
and a number of exciting panels planned as well.
And on Friday, we have Joan Jenkinson from the new Black Screen Office to give the keynote
talk, as well as a keynote panel with all of our keynote speakers from the conference
with the opportunity for them to speak together.
So we've got an exciting agenda.
ahead, do check out the conference website to see that, and we're looking forward to
the day ahead. Peter, why don't I turn it over to you to introduce our keynote speakers today?
Hello, everybody.
I'm Peter Cockett
from McMaster School of the Arts.
Before we begin, I just like to acknowledge that McMaster University is built on Indigenous
land, specifically that are the Mississaugas of the credit First Nation.
The Haudenoshaunee confederacy and other nations acknowledged and unacknowledged, recorded and
unrecorded. At McMaster we are accountable to the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt covenant,
a sacred agreement that requires accountability from all inhabitants to respect the land,
animals and each other. From my understanding of the Dish with One Spoon agreement, it
calls for the generous, equitable, and peaceful sharing of resources.
This is obviously not something that the Canadian government has respected over the years.
But I'm honoured and delighted to introduce today two speakers who are powerful advocates
for equity within the film and television industry.
Sharon McGowan is a founding member and past president of the Women in Film and Television
Vancouver, and serves on the board of directors as co-chair of its advocacy Committee, which
is well known for leadership in the movement of gender equity in the Canadian film and
television industry, and her advocacy work has included decades of analysis and lobbying
of Canadian funding agencies, regulators, and unions to increase equity and diversity.
She serves on the Telephone Calendar Gender Parity Working Group, and as a founding member
of the newly formed Women in Film and Television Canada coalition.
Sharon's background is also as an award winning documentary writer and director and as an
independent producer of internationally recognized feature films.
Sharon is also a committed industry educator.
She is an associate professor at UBC, where she served for several years as Chair of the
Film Production programme and associate head of the Department of Theatre and Film.
Susan Brinton has decades of experience as well in film and television policy and analysis
in Canada.
Her background includes senior management roles in the Canadian private broadcasting
sector and federal public funding agencies.
Susan has been a policy consultant and led producer-focused, international export development
initiatives for the Canadian media Producers Association and other industry organizations.
As co chair of the advocacy committee for Women in Film and Television Vancouver,
Susan has been a vital leader in many of its successful advocacy initiatives.
She is a founding member of WIFT Canada and is also currently the Vice President of WIFT
International.
Susan is also a member of the women and production steering committee for the CRTC.
If we've ever had two experts on a subject who have been assembled to talk about a subject,
then this is the, this is the moment.
So welcome to both of you.
Thank you for joining us.
I'm really looking forward to hearing your words today.
You're muted, Sharon.
Hi, thank you, Peter.
Sorry, I'll go first, it's Sharon.
First, Susan and I would like to acknowledge that we're speaking from Vancouver, which is
located on the unceded, traditional and ancestral lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations.
First of all, we'd also like to thank Sara Bannerman, David Ogborn, Tamara Shepherd, and
McMaster University for inviting us to speak, and to Peter for chairing the session.
It's an honour to be speaking at this conference alongside such fantastic leaders in our industry.
We'd also like to thank Dr. Darlene Laforme for her powerful opening presentation, offering
so many valuable lessons to keep in mind while doing our work.
And of course, Jesse Wente, who's always so inspirational to hear. Our plan for this
hour is to give you an overview of some of the key activism and policy direction by women
in the Canadian screen industries.
Then we'll take a look at where we are now and what we believe our future focus should be.
At the end, we'll have time for some questions or comments from everybody.
But first, we'd like to tell you a little bit about ourselves and how we came to be
doing the work we're doing for so many decades.
Back in 1974, when I first started, I was one of the first women admitted to the BCIT
Broadcast Communications programme.
I was one of eight women in a class of 45 students.
All the instructors were male in our first week, and our instructor told us there would be
little work for women.
We wouldn't be trusted to do technical work or directing, and we wouldn't be allowed to
speak or appear on the air.
He said as women didn't have credibility or authority, and audiences found women irritating,
he added we were advised to drop out right away or to focus on learning to write commercials
or researching new stories behind the scenes.
Fortunately, although it hadn't yet registered at BCIT, a second feminist wave
was well underway in Canada.
The report by the Royal Commission on the status of women published several years earlier
had identified a wide range of discriminatory laws holding women back.
New policies, including the Equal Employment Act and the equitable portrayal code in broadcasting
ushered in change
in film and television.
Women like me slowly began finding opportunities and seeing women in jobs we hadn't even dared
to dream of.
It was an exciting, exhilarating, but difficult time.
Aggressive sexual harassment and gender based put downs were pretty much everyday, constant
occurrences for women at work in our field.
Male colleagues, frequently with less training, advanced much, much more quickly.
But women leaders kept breaking down doors. I quickly learned that organizing with other
women and keeping a sharp eye on cultural policy were keys to any real progress.
And in recent years, many of us have focused on getting and publicising detailed data on
gender discrimination in the screen industries in order to push for real equity.
Thanks, Sharon.
I'm Susan Brinton,
and thank you for having me here.
This is my origin story.
I got my first job in this industry through nepotism, just like many of the men when I
was young. My father managed a TV station in his small-ish prairie town,
and my brother and I always got summer jobs there.
But while nepotism got me in the door in the industry, gender determined the jobs that
I was given in accounting administration, and particularly at reception.
My brother got to work, however, in the definitely way more fun studio news departments.
Since my brother and I are only a year apart, and I skipped a grade, we were in the same
grade.
This was not the first double standard I've encountered with him,
and I can honestly say my brother is the reason I became a feminist.
The Me Too movement unleashed a torrent of random stories about the harassment and injustices
women have suffered, including in the Canadian cultural industries.
And it made me look back at my 20 plus years in the industry. Like many, I'd pushed aside
or glossed over the issues as just the way it was.
And I was also relatively protected from harassment because of my father's increasing stature
in the broadcasting industry.
And yet, in my early 30s, I was working for a company of which my father was retiring
as deputy chairman.
On rare occasions, my father and I would end up in the same meeting, including one day
with my boss's boss, the president of the company. It was just the three of us sitting around a
small table discussing the business at hand, and so suddenly, under the table, I can feel
my boss's boss start running his stocking foot up my leg.
I was wearing a skirt.
I was just stunned and immobilized.
And there just didn't seem to be any good reaction to the situation; call it out and
create obviously a serious fissure between my boss, my boss's boss, and my father, and
ultimately my boss, or do I do nothing and somehow be complicit in this behaviour.
And at the time, my boss's boss just grinned at me like it was no big deal.
I did nothing.
It was about power.
And it made me feel shame afterward for not doing anything about it.
And I have never, I guess, forgotten that feeling.
And realizing that even with my father in the industry, or even sitting beside me, I
was not safe.
And that was when I joined the board of WIFTV Vancouver and started working for change.
Before diving in, we want to talk about why this advocacy work in the Canadian screen
industries is so crucial beyond our own personal passion.
It's a fundamental issue of equity.
We believe there should be equitable training and equitable access for all women and all
people to jobs and funding in Canada screen industries, much of which is supported by
taxpayer dollars.
For Indigenous women, it is also an issue of cultural and narrative sovereignty.
It's a safety issue.
According to the 2016 US Select Task Force on the study of harassment in the workplace.
One of the main risk factors for a culture of harassment is a homogenous workforce.
It's an economic issue.
Research shows that films with women and people with diverse identities, both behind the scenes
and on screen earn more at the box office.
Most importantly, who works behind the scenes fundamentally impacts what appears on screen
and helps define the role models of society.
A 2020 study by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative examined inequity in the top 100 grossing
US films in 2019.
In films with black directors, it found 53% of all speaking characters were black.
Only 12.9% of all speaking characters were black
when the director identified with another race or ethnicity.
Asian directors were associated with a higher percentage of Asian speaking characters on
screen, 27%, than non Asian directors at 5.9%.
The Annenberg study also found that the percentage of female speaking characters and co-leads
increased significantly when a woman director was attached.
Women comprised 45% of all speaking roles, and 83% of leading/co-leading characters in
films with female directors, and in movies with male directors, women characters represented
only 32.5% of all characters, and 37.5% of leading co-leading characters.
The study didn't calculate the ratios of LGBTQ+ directors to LGBTQ+ characters on
screen, or have disabled directors to disabled characters on screen.
But applying these ratios, it's safe to assume there were very few.
For example, the study showed only 2.3% of all speaking characters across the 100 top
grossing films of 2019 were depicted with a disability.
Only 1.4% of the speaking characters were LGBTQ+, and only over half of these were
inconsequential to the plot.
Across 600 top grossing films from 2007 to 2019.
Only four transgender speaking characters were depicted on screen, and all four roles
collectively accounted only for a total of two minutes of screen time.
So having complex diverse people on screen matters deeply.
Seeing yourself on screen is hugely influential in validating people's lives and then helping
them to change their lives.
A 2017 study by the Gina Davis Institute on gender and media found that female characters
in films motivated women to be more ambitious, more successful, and even gave them the courage
to break out of abusive relationships.
A survey of 4300 women in nine countries, Brazil, China, India, Saudi Arabia, South
Africa, Russia, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the US found that 19% of women feel that
female role models in film or TV are important. 61% that said that female role models in film
and TV have been influential in their lives, and 58% said that women have been inspired
by role models and film to be more ambitious or assertive.
The study also revealed that one in nine women globally and as high as one in four women
in Brazil said that positive female role models in film or TV had given them the courage to
leave an abusive relationship.
In Canada, we have a long and strong history of women working for equity in the screen
based industries.
The National Film Board's Studio D, established in 1974, was the world's first publicly funded
feminist film production unit.
It was created in response to years of activism and protests within the NFB by a group of
women working there, led by sound editor Kathleen Shannon. Shannon and her supporters collected
data that showed very few women were working as directors, writers, cinematographers, or
editors at the NFB, and not surprisingly, very few women were
represented in NFP films. Any issues affecting women were presented by male experts.
The most dominant image of a woman in an NFP film of the time, was her gazing silently
out the window.
Studio D began to change all that. Under Shannon's leadership, Studio D won over 80 international
awards for its outstanding films, films about women, directed and produced by women, and
including three Oscars.
In the late 1960s and 70s, several artist- driven feminist filmmaking and distribution
co-ops and collectives were also founded by activists across the country to support
women's work, and advocate for equity in the industry at large.
This groundswell led to other breakthroughs.
The first Canadian feature film directed by a woman, titled Madeleine Is, was made in 1971
by Sylvia Spring.
Spring later became a major contributor to a national task force on sexual stereotyping
in the media, which led to new regulations improving the portrayal of women on Canadian
television. No more women silently staring out the window. During the 1970s, and 1980s.
WIFTV, Women in Film and Television chapters were established by activists across
Canada: in Toronto in 1984, and Vancouver in 1989.
The St. John's International Women's Film Festival was founded in 1989, and other
Women in Film chapters were formed in Montreal in 1991.
Alberta joined in 1998, and Atlantic Canada in 2007.
In the early years, these WIFTV chapters focused on professional development, networking, and
promoting the talents of women in film, rather than direct activism.
Although women were still vastly outnumbered in the industry, it was generally believed
that would soon change. It was felt that in a fair world, women only needed to develop
their talents and skills and promote them to the industry for the opportunities to follow.
But that didn't happen.
Studies we conducted in BC in 2004 revealed that in spite of the industry's massive expansion
in the 1990s, significant gender inequity was entrenched at all levels in the BC industry,
both in hiring and production funding, and among both the independent sector and the
unionised sector.
It persisted even though women were graduating at close to the same rate as men from publicly
funded film schools, and that women working in the industry, were consistently more highly
trained than their male counterparts.
But women were concentrated in entry level positions, more securing only a fragment of
available financing in a rapidly expanding industry.
While this study focused on BCs industry, it was easy to see similarities across the country.
But industry response to these studies was muted at best and hostile at worst.
Those who held the keys, the union's agencies and broadcasters, all felt this inequity was
not their responsibility to fix.
They claimed women weren't being kept out by systemic barriers or bias.
They just weren't talented enough or ambitious enough to make it in the industry.
In the face of this widespread denial and refusal to act, we at WIFTV Vancouver,
with student grants from University of BC, continued collecting and publishing both provincial
and national data
on a website we call Please Adjust Your Set. Working from crew lists, funding announcements,
awards, nominations, and festival programmes that we continually updated what was a clear
picture of systemic exclusion of women, and we kept bringing in allies and others to our cause.
In 2012, at the St. John's International Women's Film Festival, the newly formed research group
based in Toronto, Women in View, released its first national statistical study of the status
of women directors and screenwriters on 130 Canadian films released in 2010 in 2011. The
number showed women directors heading only 17% of the films made through our public funding
agencies, and women writers heading only 21%.
Two years later, in 2014, Women in View and the St. John's International Film Festival
hosted a historic summit of the key women's media groups in Canada.
The organisations represented over 40,000 people working in the industry.
The summit relied on the new data and the inspiration of Anna Serner, the CEO of the
Swedish Film Institute, which had just recently committed to equal gender support and film funding.
Summit participants made seven recommendations.
These included a call for all government funding to the Canadian industry to be distributed
to men and women equally, and government policies and agencies driving and regulating the industry
should ensure gender equity and inclusion in funding, employment, and onscreen
representation.
And crucially, that detailed data should be collected by all agencies and made public.
Again, there was little industry interest in these recommendations.
But a year later, when the new federal Liberal government came in with a commitment to gender
equity and a gender diverse cabinet,
they came to power, we sensed an opening.
Women's groups from the St.
John's summit approached agencies and policymakers across the country. WIFTV Vancouver in particular
took a leadership role in direct lobbying.
We wrote strongly worded letters and met with Melanie Joly, the Minister of Heritage at
the time, and with the leaders of the National Filmboard, Telefilm, and the Canada Media Fund.
We demanded
they address the issues of gender equity.
The National Film Board moved first, committing in early 2016 to gender parity and equal funding
in films directed by women.
This NFB commitment to dealing with gender inequity made international headlines.
A month later, under intense pressure following the NFB action and intense lobbying and public
pressure by women's media groups across the country,
Telefilm and the CMF announced their commitment to quote, finding viable and lasting solutions
to the lack of gender parity in the audiovisual industry.
End quote. The CBC soon followed with an announcement in June 2016, that at least half of its new
primetime dramas would be directed by women.
With all the major government funders and public broadcast and now working on gender
equity initiatives, Sharon and I, as co chairs of the advocacy committee at with Vancouver,
turned our attention to the private Canadian broadcast.
We had long dreamed of calling out the CRTC, the regulatory body responsible for broadcasters
in Canada for failing to deliver on their stated mandate to ensure Canadian broadcasters
followed the policies set out in the Broadcasting Act 1991.
According to the Broadcasting Act, the Canadian Broadcasting System should, through its programming
and the employment opportunities arising out of its operations, serve the needs and interests
and reflect the circumstances and aspirations of Canadian men, women and children, including
equal rights.
The paragraph continues, it should also include the linguistic duality and multicultural
and multiracial nature of Canadian society and a special place of Aboriginal peoples
within that society.
Given the dismal gender statistics and chronic underrepresentation of Indigenous and racialized
filmmakers that work and receive funding for programming in Canada, we really believe
the CRTC had failed to do its job.
And we often fantasize about invoicing the CRTC for the lost wages from 1991 and lost
opportunities suffered by women, Indigenous and other marginalized filmmakers across those
decades.
And I think we agreed that 500 million would just about cover it. We were able to approach
the CRTC during the fall of 2016, when the commission held public hearings to review
Canadian private broadcasters' performance.
We filed a formal submission, and we flew to Ottawa to appear in person in front
of the commissioners.
We were last on the agenda for the day. In the audience, the room was empty, and we presented
our findings alone to the commission.
Our data, including that from Women in View's 2015 report, showed that of the 27 live action
Canadian English television drama series funded in 2012 to 2013,
the majority have been committed by the private broadcasters on these series. Only 26% of
the director, writer, and cinematographer positions were held by women; women constituted 11%
of directors and 34% of the screenwriters employed.
No women were employed as cinematographers in serious series television.
The CRTC commissioners were attentive and actually shocked to hear these numbers. Susan
and I answered questions for almost half an hour.
A few weeks later in the formal decisions arising from the hearings, we
were delighted to hear the CRTC acknowledge its role in regulating gender equity in Canadian
television programming commissions, and commit to a review of its processes.
Upon completion of the review in 2019, the CRTC implemented a new reporting structure
for Canadian private broadcasters that focused on gender equity.
The large major Canadian broadcasters are now required to collect annually and publicly
report data on the numbers of women producers, directors, writers, cinematographers, and editors,
as well as first and second lead performers in the programmes they commission.
They're also required to file public, voluntary measures for improving gender balance
in the key creative roles in the programming they commissioned.
These decisions by the CRTC are a major win for women. While we dislike and will keep lobbying
against the concept of voluntary measures for broadcasters, the Commission has finally
unlocked access to private broadcaster data that lets us determine the status which will
allow for further scrutiny of gender participation in Canadian broadcaster programming.
The CRTC decision was a landmark in Canadian television policy for gender equity, and we're
extremely proud to take it off our bucket list.
So where are we now? Some positive results on gender equity have followed the various
government commitments.
According to the 2020 onscreen report just released by Women in View, we see that various
commitments from the government organizations in the industry have had
an impact and some clear positive results. In the period 2018 to 2019, 60% of all directing
contracts went to women, a 23% increase from 2017.
But it's also important to note that 78% of women-led series commissioned were at the CBC.
Unfortunately, private broadcasters did not step up to prioritize gender parity, and therefore
made little progress.
Overall, the percentage of women in key creative roles jumped significantly from 28% in 2017,
to 43% in 2019.
But this increase was not across the board.
Women only made up 35% of showrunners. Women cinematographers
saw only an 8% increase in contracts in 2017.
And digging deeper, the data shows more profound inequity. Of the 43% of women in key creative roles,
only 6.4% were black and women of colour, and only .94% were Indigenous women.
The same disparity exists in every measured category.
TV directors were 49% female, but only 12% of those jobs went to black and women of colour,
and less than 1% went to Indigenous women.
Women writers finally surpassed gender parity at 56.8%.
But only 4.7% were black and women of colour, and 1.7% were Indigenous women.
Further analysis showed that women show runners hired 65% women writers, but only 5% were
black and women of colour, and 2% were Indigenous.
On set,
46.1% of the episodes were directed by women,
but of those only 16.8% were directed by black and women of colour, and none, 0%, were directed
by Indigenous women.
In the world of feature film, women-led films were financed at the lowest levels,
with the investment per project much lower than that of male-led productions.
Male-directed projects averaged $649,000, while women-directed projects averaged $478,000,
and black and women of colour directed projects averaged just $181,000--micro budget levels
in production financing.
But there is one encouraging statistic: a boost to Telefilm's Indigenous stream meant Indigenous
women directors saw an average of $496,000 in film financing.
When looking at projects with funding from Telefilm of over a million dollars.
Only 26% of the films were directed by women, none directed by black women and women of
colour, and 3.7% were directed by Indigenous women.
Analysis also shows that women producers are hiring more women to direct at 50%,
but of those, only 9% are black women and women of colour, and 1.5% are Indigenous women.
This data reveals a disturbing pattern common across gender parity initiatives.
Setting targets merely based on gender fails to equitably serve all women.
When examined individually, the statistics reveal the shameful lack of diversity within
leadership positions in writing rooms, and onset, there is much work to be done to truly
represent the cultural and racial reality of Canada in our country on the big and small screens.
Targets and timelines need to be set for increasing the opportunities and funding to Indigenous
work and women of colour and detailed data needs to be continually collected and made public.
But there have been some promising developments to acknowledge at this point.
In the federal government's recent budget, we were pleased to see funding was increased
for the Indigenous screen office, Telefilm Canada, the NFB, and the CMF in order to support
greater access to production by people from underrepresented communities, including women.
This is a direct result of years of work by Indigenous, black, people of colour, LGBTQ+,
and disability activists and organizations in our industry, as well as women's groups
across the country.
This is reason to celebrate.
We're also heartened by the government's proposed update to the Broadcasting Act Bill C-10.
The overriding purpose of Bill C-10 is to bring the online services like Netflix and
Amazon Prime under Canadian regulation to ensure they contribute appropriately to Canadian
content and talent. That's vitally important.
While these services, particularly Netflix, have a strong record on hiring women and people
from other equity seeking groups, we must ensure they stay on track, and when working
in Canada, are subject to Canadian regulatory guidelines and processes around equity and
inclusion, and that they respect the goal of Indigenous cultural and narrative sovereignty.
We need access to the streamers hiring and funding data to monitor their progress,
and we need a regulatory process through which we can intervene if necessary.
There's some good news in Bill C-10.
In that it uses more inclusive language stating that the Canadian Broadcasting System should,
through its programming and the employment opportunities arising out of its operations
serve the needs and interests of all Canadians, including Canadians from racialized communities,
and Canadians of diverse ethno-cultural backgrounds, socioeconomic statuses, abilities and disabilities,
sexual orientations, gender identity and expressions, and ages, and reflect their circumstances and
aspirations, including equal rights, the linguistic duality and multicultural and multiracial
nature of Canadian society, and a special place in Indigenous peoples within that society.
However, there's a problem with that paragraph.
The word women has been completely erased from this proposed description of whose interests
should be served by the Broadcasting Act.
The word men has also been erased.
But as men are not a group that has been excluded from Canadian Broadcasting, this is much less
of a concern.
Why, after our recent progress with the CRTC, are women being rolled into what we assume
is the category of gender identities and expressions? We will propose that the new Broadcasting
Act use a more inclusive term that does not erase women, such as women and gender diverse
people.
So now we come to our next big challenge.
We're talking about the future: jobs and equitable opportunity for employment in all aspects
of film and television industry.
Most of the lobbying we've all done to date has been aimed at getting equity and opportunities
and funding for women working in lead creative positions as writers, directors, producers,
but there is a massive cultural labour force in Canada of technical and managerial workers
in the film and television production industry.
According to Profile 2019, an annual report by the Canada Media Producers Association,
the industry provided 180,000 full time equivalent jobs.
This highly paid cultural labour force has remained firmly the domain of white men.
Even if a woman or a member of another underrepresented group is working as a director on a production,
they are very much alone.
In addition, as the pathway to leadership on film sets is usually through these technical
and managerial positions,
the isolation and barriers to advancement are formidable.
There's little data on the demographics of this national, cultural labour force, but a
2020 provincial labour market study in BC, which has the largest film and TV industry in
Canada, revealed the workforce employs men to women at a two to one ratio and racialized
workers at just 15%--half of their 30% presence in BC's workforce.
Indigenous workers remain clustered in marginal lower paid categories.
There's been no data collected on workers with disabilities, but anecdotal reports leads
us to believe there are very few. With BC's film and television industry alone predicted
to need 13,000 new workers in the next six years, this employment at inequity must be changed.
This is particularly urgent considering the devastating economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
on women, Indigenous peoples, and people from other marginalized demographics.
Film and television industry jobs are highly paid and provide opportunities for rapid advancement.
One of the powerful ways to change the makeup of the cultural labour force is to change
the independent production industry's labour tax credit system provided by the federal
and provincial governments.
The tax credit system gives production companies a subsidy for hiring
Canadians, and it's an important source of government funding for film and television
production in Canada.
However, these companies can get the tax credits without paying any heed to gender equity,
diversity or Indigenous sovereignty.
The federal government provides two tax credit programmes for film and video production.
The Canadian film or video production tax credit, available only to Canadian production
companies, and the film or video production services tax credit, which encourages both
Canadian and foreign-based producers to use Canada as a production location and to employ Canadians.
Many of the provinces also provide labour tax credits.
Together, these government tax rebates represent an estimated 1 billion contribution of public
funds to Canadian certified productions.
That far outweighs the direct contributions made to film and TV by government funding
agencies, including the CMF at 350 million annually and Telefilm at 100 million annually.
There are no figures on the amounts paid out to just the foreign-based productions, but
it is likely equal or more than this amount.
Building equity and inclusion requirements or incentives to the tax credit system would
have a profound and positive impact on the Canadian industry's workforce.
As part of our WILFTV, Women in Fill and TV Canada coalition, representing the five chapters
from across the country, we wrote to Federal Minister of Heritage, the Honourable Steven Guilbeault,
advocating such action. We are very pleased to see it mentioned in his draft directive
to the CRTC, should Bill C-10 take effect.
Tying tax credits to equity and diversity is a concept that is taking off in other jurisdictions.
Recently, the UK Film Diversity Action Group made a similar proposal as published in Screen Daily.
So in addition to opening up and diversifying the cultural labour force, we're focusing
on the need to change the Canadian film and television workplace.
It operates under an outdated business model that serves the already privileged in the
industry and sustains the status quo.
Although much of the workforce is unionized, work days on set are often a minimum of 12
to 14 hours in a 60 to 70 Hour workweek that include evening and weekend shift work.
This is prohibitive for workers with young families or dependents and workers with disabilities.
The industry also fosters a culture in which no one can miss a workday without serious
career consequences, even in dire personal circumstances.
And workplace discrimination is flourishing.
In a research project for WIFTV Canada coalition in consultation with Real Families for Change
Canada that we're just concluding, we surveyed film workers on the topic of family care and
family life and industry.
The results were damning.
Women reported being fired for becoming pregnant or having to miss work due to family issues,
and they found no support from productions or unions for any kind of childcare,
despite the industry's intensive hours.
The rigid hierarchical structure of productions makes it difficult or impossible to make more
flexible arrangements or to fight abuse.
It's a workplace culture that attacks mental health and enables the sexual harassment for
which the industry is notorious, and the importance of who you know to secure employment blocks
underrepresented workers.
All of this is made worse by the bro culture on set.
Reform is entirely possible.
Some productions are finding that during the COVID pandemic, long work days aren't possible anyway.
And they aren't needed given the better organization that COVID protocols have required.
Some unions and guilds as well as production companies are beginning to assess their structures
and becoming more aware of the toxic and discriminatory practices that are excluding people.
These are promising first steps, but we need to look at a wholesale systemic change to
really shift this industry.
Some of our recommendations include identifying and removing discriminatory hiring practices
in the industry, revising seniority criteria to advance underrepresented workers in the
unions, reduce work hours to a sustainable level, provide work flexibility, and financial
and practical support for parents and caregivers, and provide culturally appropriate career
support and pathways for currently marginalized workers.
Canada's film and television industry has a tremendous future.
But it must be a future in which everyone can participate at every level. Getting the
detailed data and getting government policy changes, we'll make that happen.
Thank you for listening to us.
And we are now happy to have any questions or comments.
Thank you both so much for that presentation, and congratulations on the results of your
advocacy by the CRTC especially there, that's a that's a huge achievement.
That's going to make a big difference for women working in the industry going forward.
Also really thrilled to hear about the further initiatives that the advocacy continues,
and I'd love to hear more about that. I'm happy to take questions, or to field questions, I'm
not going to answer the questions,
either by raising the virtual hand or putting it in a chat, or if you just want to speak up,
you can raise your hand visually, I can see anyone who's got the camera on.
And if you put it in the chat I will read it out, rather than ask you to speak, so if
you want to speak, raise a virtual hand,
and that'll pop up to the top of the list, and I can find you there. So here's a question
from Tamara, and about mentorship schemes: where do you see the role of mentorship, how
can mentorship be more formalized, and would that help?
I'll take that one.
As somebody who's been subjected to mentorship schemes throughout my career without real
jobs at the end of it, I think that this is a bit of a red herring.
Mentorship is really, really important, but our position on this is that no mentorship
and no training without actual jobs at the end of it. What we found in our.
study of the BC industry was that women were trained within an inch of their lives, they
were mentored within an inch of their lives,
and they were spending all their time shadowing and working on underpaid internship opportunities
that did not lead to jobs, so I think that mentorship is really important, but it must
lead to employment.
Does that answer your question Tamara? Yeah? Okay, great, thank you, Sharon.
Ki?
Sharon nice to see you! I just, that was an awesome talk. Thank you so much for
the work, I'm so excited about the tax credit
lobby, I mean that's so important. I'm wondering, and I, this is self interested, because this
is an area that I'm studying at the moment, I'm wondering if, in the consultations that
you've done,
if anybody's looking at what the attitudes and competencies are of instructors that are
are teaching students in industry models, so
the B side to the programs that are feeding the industry. I'm wondering
what kind of conversations are happening at that level, if you've seen any sort of evidence of that.
If I had Sharon on the
University,
[Sharon McGowan]: Yeah, I think that's a really good question, and I know there are some people doing studies on it,
and I think it's a really important question.
But no, we haven't actually been doing any activist work.
We have that group that you've helped us support, which is, we've tried to create a cohort in Vancouver of women.
graduating from film programs and that's actually had some real value in terms of networking
and pulling each other along and also contributing to other programs but that's a really great
idea and a great--and would you like to join our committee and work?
[Ki Wright]: Yes! Okay, thank you!
Excellent, there we go! This is how we recruit.
I was going to say, this is a recruitment event now! Who else is in?
Awesome.
So I was, I'm
working with a group of young aspiring filmmakers, who, women of colour, gender diverse, but also
neurodiverse.
And we're working in a, trying to centre care in the working process? I come from a theater
background, primarily in devised theatre background, so we're trying to
centre care, like, if we're not looking after each other, then that doesn't matter how good
the workers, or you know that has to come first.
It seems a long reach to think the film and television industry might do that.
So, but, I'm so excited that's what you're talking about, and I'm just wondering what
those, the first step from your point of view, might be to try to convince people that are
entrenched in this oppressive way of working to change. What do you think are the first steps?
it's a real challenge, and our first step was with what we call the family care project,
and it was, we had done, as WIFTV Canada,
we had done a bunch of national webinars during 2020, and we did a cross-country checking
with members across the country, and the major issue of concern was childcare in our industry,
so we said okay, we're going to propose a research project on childcare.
Once I started doing that, and I was the lead on the project, it became
We became aware that it was much deeper than just daycare licensing across different,
you know, parts of cities or towns.
It was about the systemic bias, when you dug down into it, it was about the fact that there's
a culture and a methodology that has worked
for the production industry for many years, but they've never been challenged on
what it requires from people other than young white men, because it's very much, you know,
if you don't want to do this job, I can find five others who will replace you.
So there's that constant threat of losing your job if they're doing anything like having
to go to daycare pick up your child, and this
really spurred us to look at what was underlying all this for all caregivers and all parents.
This was not just affecting women, it was affecting parents, it was affecting carers
that might have older relatives, it was affecting carers who might have an adult child they
need to take care of, and
there was absolutely no interest on the industry side to really look into it, so our first
step is always get the data.
What are people saying, then follow the money. Where's the money coming from to fund this,
and in Canada, the money coming to fund this is also partially through the tax credit,
you know, and so there are government funding. We started at the top of the government funding,
we went, we're going to go to the lowest hanging fruit, that was National Film Board, then Telefilm, then
the Canada Media Fund, and now we're looking at the last big chunk of government funding,
which is a tax credits that have no gender or equity or diversity inclusion requirements,
and we think that is the mechanism to force change.
Because of that, there's a lack of agreement in the industry, on whose
problem caregiving and well being really is, and it's falling to women
in the industry and beyond, and that's so, we're going forward on it. We're continuing
to lobby, we will write, you know, to the government about Bill C-10,
the CRTC if the hearings follow from Bill C-10, they have a nine month hearing process
to institute, and we will be there, we will write the submissions.
We will be involved in that, so we are looking at the opportunities right now to process [...] of
what is going to be coming down the pipeline, and how do we strategically position these
issues to get recognition at a national level.
Thank you, that brings such clarity to the strategic approach that you're taking, thank you so much.
A question from Sara: I would be interested in hearing you speak more about the importance
of the equitable portrayal code, which you mentioned earlier. How much stock do you
put in industry codes of conduct to make change?
What are the key ingredients of a code that can make change?
Well, I don't know much about what the key ingredients would be, but I know that I got
jobs on the air after the equitable portrayal code was put in place, I mean, I'm a living example.
And I remember, I remember when that policy came in and everybody was talking about it,
the entire feminist movement and all sorts of things started to change.
But I mean, back to what Susan said, I think the most important key ingredients of a code
is public accountability, like if they have to report on it,
like what they're doing, because if we don't have that information, you're just completely
blocked out, you have no idea, and
you end up doing the kind of research that we were doing off the side of our desks in
the early 2000s. I was literally
teaching all day, grading all night, and then at the side of my desk looking at all of the
funding list from Telefilm and the crew list from the productions and doing a gender spreadsheet,
right, you end up
gleaning, but if we can get people to report, we get a clear reporting system, then we can
intervene, and the policies are only as good as the people that are.
Holding people to account for them, right, I mean it's like you can have all the great
policies in the world, but if the public isn't engaged and there aren't groups monitoring
it, it might not happen, so that--does that answer your question?
We have a question too from Rachel here, was [...] something that really struck me and
relates to what you were just talking about data.
I agree that data is so important in order to drive inform policy, but it seems like
data is losing its power now that people are becoming hyper focused on who has done the data.
And disregard and get if it comes from a group government administration, etc, that doesn't
fit their worldview.
Or they use their personal anecdotes to disregard data. For example, I had a female boss, so
there is no issue. How do you feel about that? And I'm an American,
and that could be influencing my opinion on this.
Well, these are timeless I mean I remember, you know, in the 70s, people saying I had a
woman boss, and she was no good, or we had a woman announcer, and everybody hated her
And everybody always, you know, goes on about the data, but I think if you don't
have it, you're not in the game, you can't force any kind of change, and you can't justify your position.
And that's one of the reasons why, when the pandemic hit, WILFTV Canada were completely
alarmed, because all of the research we've all done over the last two decades that's
led to these changes
was going to be was in jeopardy, because everything we were worried, everything would change, and
we would have no snapshot of what happened during the pandemic, so we actually commissioned
another study, the CMF gave us money to commission a study on
the impact of the pandemic on decision making around diversity and equity in the industry,
and we're going to be releasing that this fall, so we'll have some more data, so we're
big data fans.
And I, you know, until somebody comes up with the different methods of proving a case, I
think we'll stick with that.
Yeah, we've never had an issue with people questioning our data, we've never had them
come back and go, no, that's not accurate, that can't be right, except, you know, as you say,
I believe in the data but it's hard when you have government data for anybody to deny it.
It's like, this is the government data, this is available to people to look at, so.
You don't want to believe it, that that's your choice, but this is what our basis is. If
you can't measure it, it doesn't get done.
But you also have to
have access to it. For a long time, Women in View was
publishing their national data,
and Telefilm was denying it, like they were saying that's not the way we calculate it,
those numbers aren't right, I was at several presentations where that happened, and then,
when Telefilm started having to make their data public, then we could all get along, right.
Yeah.
That's so interesting.
Question from Paula Gardner: that was a wealth of knowledge, thank you for your advocacy
over these many years.
I'm wondering about your impressions re: the role of the public in supporting your
originated advocacy efforts. What do you find to be the effective action or interventions
by members of the public?
I am so excited by--I'll let Susan speak in a minute, because I like dominate here with
this--I'm so excited by members of the public who do actually
do the Twitter thing, who do pick up these causes, who actually do write letters, it does
make a huge difference coming from others. I know that when we were campaigning
in 2015-2016, for
the funding agencies Telefilm to change their policies and to actually take gender equity
as part of their responsibility.
There was a number of activists in Toronto, who are independent academics and activists
who just started Tweeting like crazy and calling out the agencies, and that made such a difference
to our
letter writing and our polite meetings and so on.
The fact that there was talk around this, so keep it up.
Yes, we'd like to be very engaged with members and non-members, our webinars
are open to everybody, we just really believe in that, because every voice helps, every voice
counts, and yeah, we encourage that.
I have a question from Jan Miller, the reporting system is so important, but WCC wants to push
this one step further, to push that there be a consistency in the format of the data delivery.
Have anything to say about consistency and data?
Well, this is what we did in January, we presented to the CRTC and we said, you know,
you have now acquired the broadcasters to fill in
the broadcaster production reports, this is what came out of our lobbying over the couple
of years, this is how they track women.
And it tracks these, the key creative roles, writer, director, producer cinematographer, editor,
show runner, and the first two actor leads.
And on that basis, all the commissioning projects, that means their Canadian content,
big budget dramas, document series, whatever, that are getting funding from the CMF and
Telefilm are captured under this, and so the broadcasters must report annually on this
breakdown. It also, they implemented for
minority language and Indigenous, so it's Indigenous, minority language, and women that are trapped
under this massive spreadsheet form.
And we advocated that you must further do a breakdown, you must include black people
of color and disabilities and LGBTQ+,
you know, if we are to get this accurate information, you already have
the format, you already require it, just expand it.
But there's a bit of pushback on that, because when you go to these forums, which have to
be made public, they're on the CRTC website, they are massive spreadsheets.
And so, what we're looking at right now with the CRTC committee women and
production committee is,
can you give us a summary, and you just sort of collapse this information, because otherwise
it's hours and hours of shifting through it and adding it all up, so there's kind of
passive resistance.
But most broadcasters are reporting, and overall they do have, they have committed to
gender equity in all their Canadian programming by 2025, but you don't hear them talking about
that very much just right now.
Well, and I think Jan's point is a really good one in that Women in View, which Jan Miller
is on the board of, is they collect a lot of the data, and it would be helpful and kind of
help the credibility of the data if the broadcasters and Telefilm and all the agencies use the
same kind of criteria and the data was easier to kind of combine, that would be, as
Susan says, if it's all different, it makes way more work for us volunteers, like,
is there a way to do this?
And it makes it very difficult to really figure out what is going on.
And one last little question because time is nearly up--oh, there's another one come in now,
though, so maybe we could squeeze to it--the support from CMF for data in the sphere is
really interesting. Would like to know how that's made available, including to scholars.
CMF data is very easy.
Canada Media Fund, you go to CMF dot AMC or something.
They have an archives, you can go in by year, you can go in, and you can pick, you know, French
language drama production series and get it, you can go by broadcaster.
They provide a really good presentation of data with a lot of search capabilities and
they are actually the most clearly data driven and data responsive because they take great
efforts to do really good data and to share it, and so with the CMF,
it's very easy to go on to their website, go into their archives, and if you have a special
run of data that you would like.
they're pretty good about saying, okay tell us what you need, and
as long as it's not confidential, you know, we'll put a spreadsheet together for
you, so the CMF is really good at data provision because they've made it a priority.
Telefilm has such an old history in film history and administration history that it's less
clear on, instead it's less straightforward, but I think Sharon can tell you on the,
On the-- They're getting a lot better.
And they're super prompt with analyzing and stuff, it's almost a completely different
universe from when we started talking to them like six years ago, it's very, very forthcoming.
Thanks in no doubt to your advocacy.
I just want to squeeze in one more question, I'm sorry to interrupt you there, Susan, but
we're out of time, I believe, is that right, Sara? Someone?
Can I squeeze this one last question because it's a union-related question and I really
connected with this notion of the bro culture onset, having been on set and having seen this
happen.
And so, changes to film tech worker cultures, it is so crucial that unions be actively engaged
I think they actually need to change how membership and craft locals is determined
going forward.
Just curious about what you think about recent education and training initiatives in IATSE
as well.
The ones that I know about seem like a real step in the right direction, and they are
actually doing, IATSEs are doing different studies on this too, and publishing the results. They're
not very.
It's interesting. They're not very forthcoming and crowing about it publicly, but I get the
IATSE newsletter because my partner's a member, and they have lots of great.
data and initiatives. They need to do a ton more, and they know it, they know what, they're
aware of it, so any pressure anybody can put and support, we want to make it a fun and
exciting thing for everybody to make this change.
Yeah. it's gonna be a struggle with the producer organizations, you know, NBC we
have Canadian producers, and we have a very active
service production industry, and it's bringing everybody to the table, and I think that's,
that's really what we're trying to do at this point, is have these discussions.
It's just a toxic workplace, it's not good for anybody. How can we make it more responsive
to people's health and well being, especially after, you know, with the pandemic, it was just
like, wow, okay, we've got to do some serious reorienting here.
Everybody's had to pause women in childcare, and it was like, no, okay, this has to be better
for everybody. It's got to be a healthier environment, especially if we're funding it by the government,
you know, it's, this shouldn't be funding an unhealthy work environment.
In my opinion.
That's a great note to finish on, full of hope for further change, and thank you again so
much for all that you've done, and thank you for joining us today to talk about your work.
I find it personally very inspiring, and I'm sure there's others out there, too, so maybe
we could let everybody know in the chat or with a visual clap or a virtual clap or a
virtual explosive party popper.
However, you want to express your thanks.
We are always looking for volunteers.
Recruiting!
Join your WIFTV chapter near you!
There we go.
Thank you, Peter.
Thanks so much.
Thank you, Peter, and thank you Susan and Sharon, that was just a spectacular session.