Insuring production's future
As Canada’s showrunners and filmmakers prepare to resume production, producers’ association the CMPA is lobbying government to provide an insurance backstop.
Canada’s production landscape is slowly creaking back to life, with filming resuming, or slated to resume, on a province-by-province basis.
In Quebec, the provincial government allowed production to restart on June 8, announcing a C$91.5m (US$67m) investment in the film and TV sector via government agency SODEC.
In Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, film and TV production was broadly allowed to start again from June 12, albeit not in the City of Toronto, which is still under lockdown. And in British Columbia, statutory agency WorkSafeBC has released a list of minimum industry re-opening standards.
But regardless of whether production can resume, showrunners and filmmakers face a practical problem in securing insurance, given that insurance companies will not provide coverage for Covid-19-related problems until a vaccine is produced.
In a bid to break the impasse, the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA) is proposing a market-based solution that would see the federal government serving as a backstop for Covid-19 insurance claims.
Reynolds Mastin, the association’s president and CEO, told C21 about the proposal.
Talk us through the CMPA’s proposal for a government insurance backstop.
Our understanding is that the insurance companies that service our sector will be writing or already have written exclusions for Covid-19 into their policies. So, our proposal is aimed at giving them an incentive to rethink this and, in fact, to provide Covid-19 insurance coverage.
Producers would pay premiums to cover the costs related to payouts under this coverage, and where the government would step in is only where the pot of money generated by the premiums the producers would pay was not enough to cover the cost of the claim’s pay-outs. So it really would be the government acting as a backstop.
So, if you had a larger production and a big-name actor gets sick from Covid-19 and filming has to halt, producers or broadcasters wouldn’t have the kind of money to cover the insurance?
That is a perfect example of the kinds of scenarios where we need to make sure we have Covid-19 insurance coverage, yes.
Have you or the taskforce that the CMPA is part of had any indication from the federal government whether they would support something like this?
There’s certainly a very high level of engagement. We have trial ballooned our proposal; and I say ‘trial ballooned’ because we’ve also been doing stakeholder consultations on the proposal and may make some adjustments to reflect the feedback that we’ve had. But the basic parameters, we think, are more or less set.
We’ve been working with government officials in [the Department of Canadian] Heritage with their analysis of our proposal. And we’ve been very encouraged both by the calibre of the questions they’re asking and the number, because it shows us that they’re taking our proposal very, very seriously, and they’ve been very responsive to the need for us to move on this quickly.
Have they indicated it might be easier for smaller productions to resume, where there’s less liability, and that it might be harder for bigger productions?
Just to flip it around, I think that the bigger the production, the higher the risk and the greater the need for insurance. So there may be situations where if you are a very, very small production with a handful of crew – for example, a documentary– then you may be able to manage those risks more easily than on larger productions where you’re dealing with a much larger number of people. The more bodies you have, the greater the risk. That’s the core challenge.
We are seeing some provinces start to move towards opening up again. Is it too soon to be going back to production?
We wouldn’t say it’s too soon. What is important, though, as production resumes, is that we have put all of the elements in place to ensure that productions are safe, and secondly, that we have secured the level of financing necessary to cover the additional costs that productions will be incurring to ensure they are safe.
One of the other things we’re focused on at the CMPA is working with other industry stakeholders and both levels of government on the issue of how we finance these additional costs. And that’s why we were very encouraged with the announcement by [the Quebec] government last week of additional funds to help finance those costs.
That gets us part of the way there. But it is an important precedent and we’re going to need the other provinces, as well as the federal government, to work with us on this to ensure we are able to cover those costs, and at the same time ensure we’re keeping the highest possible quality on screen. We don’t want the calibre of what we’re producing to be in any way compromised because we’re diverting funding to these measures. We want to be able to accomplish both high-quality production and safe production at the same time.
Lisa MacLeod<br />Photo: Tom Sandler Photography
In Ontario, what signs are you seeing from cultural agency Ontario Creates and the Toronto Film Office?
Ontario Creates has always been a great partner to the industry and continues to be. We have also, primarily through Film Ontario and via the pan-industry advocacy organisation, had an incredibly constructive dialogue with minister [Lisa] MacLeod and her officials.
There’s been a great openness to talking about all the issues that we’re facing. And we feel very confident that we’ll be able to work with the [Ontario premiere Doug] Ford government and with minister MacLeod on achieving the common aim of getting production back up and running and doing it safely.
How about the fact the US-Canada border remains closed?
One thing to bear in mind there is that where a province has allowed production to resume, if you have American workers who have been engaged for that production, under the current CBSA [Canada Border Services Agency] policy, they are permitted to cross the border in order to work on those productions. So, one of the things that we’re working on with our partners is ensuring there’s a consistent application of this policy at all points of entry between the US and Canada.
In general, how have your members been dealing with the shutdown since mid-March?
Obviously, there is a high level of anxiety because of all the uncertainties that Covid has created for the industry. I would say production companies that have been able to maintain control of or a meaningful economic interest in their IP have been better able to weather this storm because they have a library they can monetise. And, of course, there has been huge demand for content with everyone stuck at home over the past few months.
That’s one of the reasons why – when life begins to return to something approximating normal and the government turns its attention to modernising the Broadcasting Act – we think the past three months will illustrate how important it is the Act be amended in a way that ensures Canadians are able to meaningfully develop, own and control the IP, and that it stays in this country. Because that’s one of the lessons we’re all going to take from this.
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