Justin Trumpdeau. Photo courtesy of Twitter (@JustinTrumpdeau).

On July 1, President Donald Trump posted a tweet congratulating Canada on its 150th anniversary and referred to the prime minister as “my new found friend @JustinTrudeau.” This might seem odd, especially in light of recent disagreements between the two leaders over the Paris climate accord and Trump’s threats to ditch the 20-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). But despite their differences it seems a summer bromance is in full bloom.

While not quite at the stage of strolling together through a flowery garden path along the ocean—as Trudeau did with French President Emanuel Macron in May—Trump’s tweet did hint to some serious sparks. Far from genuine closeness, what Twitter is calling #TrumpDeau is instead the product of a well-thought-out tactic to lull the erratic president into letting Canada sit on his good side—at least for a while.

Following through with his “America First” campaign battle cry, over the last few months Trump has repeatedly attacked the U.S.-Canada trade relationship, particularly on softwood lumber, dairy, and most recently, steel. In April, Trump threatened to pull out of NAFTA, calling it a “catastrophe.” He later backtracked and said he is willing to renegotiate (though he might change his mind once more if they can’t reach a deal that is “fair for all”). Trudeau has weathered these hurdles with grace, and has yet to appear too worried.

He put it quite simply in a public event hosted by the New York Times this June in Toronto, when Trudeau was interviewed by Times journalists Peter Baker and Canadian correspondent Catherine Porter. He loosely quoted a former prime minister—he couldn’t remember which one—likening Canada’s proximity to the U.S. to sleeping beside an elephant: “No matter how even-tempered the beast, you’re affected by every twitch and grunt.” (In fact, the man behind the famous quote was none other than his own father, the charming and much-loved former Pierre Trudeau, in whose steps our current PM seems destined to follow.)

This elephant is now far larger, grumpier, and prone to shuffle around than any of his predecessors. As the protectionist rumblings of the new American president are turned to the north, Canada seems to be facing a shakedown as the government carefully balances friend and foe.

The Trudeau administration has been preparing for these uncertain times since Trump was inaugurated in January. Nearly three-quarters of Canada’s exports head to the States, and the real threat of losing NAFTA has the administration switching strategies. “He decided to take a diplomatic approach,” says Baker, who credits the PM’s tactics. “He’s going to smooth over the differences as much as he possibly can, but that doesn’t mean he’s not finding ways to advance his own agenda.”

But what that agenda is, exactly, remains uncomfortably vague. In last month’s Times event, Trudeau was quick to admit the policy differences between the two. Yet when asked about NAFTA renegotiations he stuck to his reasoning that no leader in their right mind would call off such a lucrative trade agreement with so much at stake. When pressed further about his backup plan should the renegotiations in August go bad he insisted, “There’s no need for a plan B,” later saying he was 100 percent confident in the existence of NAFTA in a year’s time.

From a diplomacy perspective, being chummy with Trump isn’t a bad place to be, and so far Trudeau has scored a position with the president that other leaders have not (cue Macron awkwardly clamouring his way to Trump’s side for G20 family portrait). But despite the eagerness of the Canadian government to insist upon its importance to its southern neighbour, the U.S. just simply isn’t as reliant on trade with Canada. A recent study by the University of Calgary has shown that in only two states—Vermont and Michigan—trade with Canada contributes to more than 10 percent of its annual economic output. Canada’s provinces, on the other hand, are far more reliant, with 49 percent of Ontario’s GDP and 31 percent of Alberta’s GDP depending on U.S. trade. This has produced a lopsided trade relationship, putting Canada in a precarious spot.

But Trump is not like any other United States president. Trudeau himself labelled the president a businessman and a dealmaker. “He knows how to interact socially on a very effective level,” he said, acknowledging that Ottawa has had to react likewise. “We realized we had to get connected with the folks who were coming in to government for the next four years.” Trudeau’s government has wisely noted Trump’s considerable value in personal relationships—he’s the kind of guy where a strong handshake goes a long way in his decision-making process. So how does one approach trade with businessman? Baker says it seems the prime minister has calculated that personal chemistry and connections matter to the new president. “While they’re going to disagree, he’s not going to do it in a way that makes President Trump angry or hostile in a direct way,” he says. “He thinks that will benefit Canada.”

Trudeau has made it clear that he believes any attempt to stiffen the border will negatively impact both sides of the deal, and in what Times columnist Max Fisher described as a “donut strategy,” Trudeau has enlisted multiple layers of government to go around him. Canadian officials are appealing directly to American mayors, governors, and small businesses to establish relations outside the boundaries of the White House—a move that Barker describes as successful. “Where Trump and he don’t agree he’s going to find other partners in America,” says Baker. “That’s clearly a way for him to avoid open conflict with the president, but in the end a president matters and he’s going to find a way to manage that relationship.”

Mimicking Trump’s own political strategy, the prime minister has used personal connections and past political ties to solidify a holistic working relationship with separate states. Former Canadian PM Brian Mulroney—who has personal connections to many U.S. officials, including Trumps commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross—was called back from retirement to act as Trudeau’s unofficial advisor. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has been in communication with North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, building ties against more “buy American” efforts, while other premiers are apparently making similar connections to cultivate access.

So what will happen if renegotiations go sour? If the deal is scrapped, it’s likely Canada and the U.S. will go back to a similar version of the previous U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement, or draft a new one altogether. In this event, things are likely to get messy with support for NAFTA divided across the United States. Millions of jobs rely on the free trade pact, especially in midwestern states where agriculture producers rely on exports to Mexico and therefore have more to lose, according to the Midwest media group Harvest Public Media. 

As the summer draws to an anxious end, Canadians are forced to trust Trudeau and his government in their noble quest to secure a sturdy personal and trade relationship with the U.S. president. Undeterred by the unstable ground he seems to be standing on, Trudeau continues to hold his head. “What I’ve found from this president is that he will listen to arguments,” he said. “And that’s something we can definitely work with.”

If you say so, Prime Minister. Over to you. 

I imagine most of the conversation will centre around talk like: “Hey, remember that time we pushed through legislation that would allow us to become even more fabulously wealthy while those in emerging economies sifted through garbage piles, with distended bellies, to find small morsels of food that could never satiate their perpetual hunger? You do? Let’s toast to Evil!” *clinks drink*

The press release announcing the gala boasts that former chiefs of staff to Brian Mulroney and Bush 1.0, Derek Burney and James Baker III will be joining the party to “reminisce about the negotiations leading up to the historic agreement.”

Which, again, I imagine will go more like this: “And then remember James, and you guys will love this, I thought of you guys — when we discussed how we didn’t really give a shit about the middle class and just as I said that a factory worker walked by and gave us a dirty look. Remember that James? Remember how we giggled?”

While these two rascals reminisce about their halcyon days of late night sleepover negotiations and the endless games of phone tag they played, representatives from Mexico will not be attending the gala.

Also contained within the press release email was this gem: “To mark the anniversary of the historic agreement, the election, and the years of prosperity for both nations since 1988…”

Prosperity for who exactly?  Was this email sent by a time traveller from 1997? Sadly it was not. It was sent by someone who is aware that the years from 2008-2013 have happened. We can all rest easily knowing that the time space continuum has not been co-opted but seriously, is this a joke?

Even if the fallacious claim that both nations have been gleefully prosperous since 1988 were true, which it isn’t, there’s still a third party to this agreement. You know, uh, Mexico. Would you ever put the words Mexico and prosperity in the same sentence? Of course you wouldn’t because Mexico is essentially embroiled in a civil war killing tens of thousands of its citizens each year. Their government doesn’t have the ability to protect its population from murderous drug cartels, but we can sell them grain at reduced prices and edge out their peasant farmers, so alls well that ends well I guess.

And while our jobs go overseas, the income gap widens, foreign investors take over our industry, and our labour force is reduced and powerless  — those who want to become even wealthier will use NAFTA as a cute example of why free trade should be international. Because in their minds wealthy nations should be able to go to resource rich third world countries, strip them of anything valuable, impugn their citizens human rights, corrupt their sovereignty and then hold a gala toasting to their own genius. Yuck.

Juan Pablo Ochoa, left, addresses a crowd of cane cutters in Bua, Colombia after a court hearing related to their strike. "What is going on is a frame-up." Photo credit: Dawn Paley.

“You know that here in Colombia, there are many human-rights violations,” says José Oney Valencia Llanos, who earns his living cutting sugar cane in Colombia’s fertile Cauca Valley. “Business people, through multinational and transnational corporations, have violated human rights and attacked workers, directly and indirectly.”

Oney told me this on a humid afternoon in El Placer, a small town in the heart of Colombia’s sugar-cane growing region. Among many of the cutters gathered nearby, there was a tangible sense of nervous apprehension. They had every reason to be nervous: about a month previously, the approximately 12,000 sugar-cane cutters in the Cauca Valley had gone back to work after a historic two-month labour strike. Their working situation, from wages to working conditions, was still tenuous. Oney had been a prominent spokesperson for the workers during the strike, a dangerous role to play in Colombia.

“We don’t have the right to free association, or political rights, or the right to unionize,” Oney says. “The government sees that we want to get together so that we can demand our rights, and they call us terrorists. Those of us that have had charges pressed against us, we’re accused of having links with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, even though we have never had links with—and at no time did we have meetings with—illegal armed groups.” Oney told me he hoped to come to Canada as a refugee because he is still being persecuted by the state for his high-profile role during the strike.

Nearby, members of sugar-cane co-operatives were using flip chart paper to plot out their victories and setbacks over the previous year and to plan for the coming months. Heavy rain was intermittent, and while Oney and I talked, an urgent phone call came in: three cane cutters had just been killed when they were struck by lightning while seeking shelter from the rains in the field. The grim news passed from person to person among the gathered cane cutters. Some knew the deceased. And they all knew that lightning is just one of the terrible ways to die in this part of the world. Natural disasters aside, systemic attacks against workers represent an important facet of the generalized violence exercised on the Colombian people.

“It’s important to understand that there is a complete disregard for labour law in Colombia, and the vast majority of workers—around 80 percent—work on informal contracts and have no right to unionize,” says Gustavo Triana, vice-president of the Central Union of Workers. The experience of Colombia’s sugar-cane cutters, the vast majority of whom are not unionized, helps to create a more vivid picture of the repression that Colombia’s large poor population faces on a day-to-day basis.

Sugar-cane cutters cut raw or burned sugar cane with machetes and hand stack it, working as many as seven days a week in conditions that seem like relics of the distant past.

“Today the conditions of sugar-cane workers could even be worse than in the times of slavery, because one has to remember that the large landowners gave to their slaves a roof over their heads and something to eat. Today, even that isn’t the case,” says Mario Valencia, an assistant to a newly formed organization of cane cutters.

“These are people that have absolutely nothing; often the only possession they have is their machete, which they use to cut the cane, and the clothes they’re wearing,” he says. “These are people that lack social security, that receive no benefits from the state, that live in reproachable housing and sanitary conditions.”

Many of the workers and their families live in substandard housing in areas without basic services. Few have job security and most come from historically disadvantaged social groups still battling with the ongoing legacies of slavery and colonization.

Here in Canada, news from Colombia is generally limited to the business section of major papers, with the odd exception when a high-profile delegation touches down on Canadian soil, or when we hear about the country’s powerful drug cartels.

More recently, the proposed Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement has been making the news. Free trade negotiations between Canada and Colombia were announced by David Emerson, former minister of international trade, on June 7, 2007. Negotiations with Peru began on the same day. The move to negotiate with Peru and Colombia signalled the Canadian government’s renewed focus on bilateral trade deals in the Americas. Prior to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s push for new bilateral trade agreements, Canada’s free trade partners were limited to the United States and Mexico through the North America Free Trade Agreement, as well as Chile, Costa Rica, and Israel.

One year to the day after negotiations were opened, Emerson announced that the talks with Colombia had been completed. “These negotiations were extremely rapid, and unlike those with the United States, which lasted 16 rounds, were finalized in the fifth of six rounds initially planned at the outset of negotiations in July of 2007,” reads a press release written by the Colombian Action Network in Response to Free Trade.

The negotiations were completed even before the parliamentary standing committee on international trade released the report they were working on, which was intended to guide the negotiations. The standing committee’s report actually recommended that the government of Canada not sign a free trade agreement with Colombia until an independent human-rights impact assessment was carried out.

Nonetheless, the Conservatives pushed the agreement forward: the texts of the deal were lawyered, translated, and signed on Nov. 21, 2008 by Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, International Trade Minister Stockwell Day, and their Colombian counterparts, Foreign Affairs Minister Jaime Bermudez and Minister of Trade, Tourism and Industry Luis Guillermo Plata.

Shockingly, it was only after the FTA was signed that the text of the agreement was released. Two side agreements, one on labour and a second on the environment, were also signed at the ceremony in Lima. “By expanding our trading relationship with Colombia, we are not only opening up new opportunities for Canadian businesses in a foreign market, we are also helping one of South America’s most historic democracies improve the human rights and security situation in their country,” said Harper, who was at the signing ceremony.

That rhetoric rings hollow for many people in Colombia. “Free trade agreements are never for the benefit of the people,” says Rafael Coicué, a Nasa indigenous leader from Cauca, in the country’s southwest. “These agreements are shaped by economic interests at the expense of life and sovereignty.”

Canadians’ experiences with NAFTA has also shown that free trade deals do not necessarily improve economic conditions for the majority.

“We have seen the results with NAFTA and the Canada-U.S. trade agreement (CUFTA). Since their implementation in 1988, these agreements and their accompanying economic policies have led to lower incomes for most Canadian families,” writes Peter Julian, the New Democratic Party’s international trade critic.

The Canada-Colombia deal was tabled in Parliament on March 26, as part of Bill C-23, and had its second reading in late May. The Conservatives are firmly behind the deal, but during the second reading, the Liberals bowed to public pressure and insisted that a human rights study be carried out before the FTA is ratified. The NDP and the Bloc Québécois have opposed ratifying the deal. Because of its poor reception during its second reading, the bill was removed from the order paper and will likely return to Parliament in the fall.

Given the financial crisis that continues to shake the globalized economy, the economic merit of the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement is the newest spin in the attempt to sell the deal to Canadians.

“Jobs will be threatened, and especially at a time when we need to open doors, not close them, this would put Canadian producers and Canadian service providers and Canadian workers at a severe disadvantage,” Day told the Canadian Press one day before the deal was tabled in parliament.

The main types of businesses that stand to benefit from a trade agreement between Canada and Colombia are in the mining, oil and gas, telecommunications, and financial sectors. Egregious rights violations aside, there has been no substantial independent economic analysis done to prove that either Canadians or Colombians will see more jobs because of the deal.

“The only rights this agreement guarantees are the rights of investors,” says Scott Sinclair, a senior research fellow in trade and investment at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. “The labour and environmental side agreements are ineffectual by comparison.”

If Canadians are aware of the problems in Colombia, it’s often related to the drug trade. Colombia is the world’s largest exporter of cocaine, and the hemisphere’s number one recipient of “assistance” from the United States, most of which is directed toward the “war on drugs” through a program called Plan Colombia. A protracted internal conflict also sows chaos there, and the political environment is dangerous—often deadly.

Critics say that ratifying an FTA would mean that Canada tacitly accepts Colombia’s horrific human rights record. Colombia is widely considered the most dangerous place on earth to be a trade unionist: the Canadian Labour Congress and the International Trade Union Confederation cite thousands of killings, tortures, and disappearances of union members.

“By endorsing this trade deal, Canadian leaders are turning their backs on the thousands of murdered trade unionists, human rights activists, journalists, indigenous people, and others who have been killed with impunity by the state and paramilitaries in the country,” says UNI Global Union General Secretary Philip Jennings. UNI represents 20 million workers in 900 different unions.

Since 1990, successive Colombian governments have actively dismantled legislation protecting the rights of workers and the environment.

“Almost 20 years of ‘free trade’ in Colombia show that such policies cause major damage to the urban and rural economies of our country, place the state in the service of powerful monopolies and transnationals, further concentrate wealth, and increase unemployment and poverty,” reads a recent letter from Colombian senators and members of the chamber of representatives. The letter was sent to Canadian Parliament on March 31 in response to the tabling of the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

Cruz María Montaña takes a swipe at the base of standing cane. Cane cutters in the Cauca Valley often work seven days a week. Photo credit: Dawn Paley.

Colombia’s other famous white powder—sugar—is an example of a product that is at the heart of the economy, the labour struggle, and the power structure in Colombia. Sugar cane was introduced into Colombia by Spanish invaders during the conquest. The first steam-powered sugar mill in Colombia was built in 1901 by Santiago Eder, then the U.S. consul in Colombia.

During the period known in Colombia as La Violencia, which began following the assassination of presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948 and lasted approximately 10 years, over half a million people were displaced from the fertile lands flanking the Cauca River. These displacements resulted in 98,400 small farms being abandoned and allowed local oligarchs to consolidate their landholdings. Today, of the 400,000 hectares of arable land along the Cauca River, close to 240,000 hectares are planted with sugar cane. A complex and water-intensive irrigation network laid throughout the Cauca Valley allows cane to be grown and harvested year-round, unlike in most other countries, where the cane harvest is seasonal. The owners of the nine sugar mills in the Cauca Valley are among the richest and most powerful men in Colombia.

Among their ranks is Ardila Lülle, who owns three sugar mills that account for 33 percent of Colombia’s sugar production. He controls Colombia’s national soft-drink business, bottle-making factories, and a host of textile manufacturing industries. Lülle also owns RCN, Colombia’s largest private media conglomerate.

RCN “has dedicated itself over the last few years to making apologies for paramilitary groups, which have assassinated almost 4,000 unionists and maintain under their politico-military dominion large expanses of the country, impeding the growth of protests,” writes Colombian economist Héctor Mondragón.

Though it barely made a blip on RCN’s TV news, everything came to a head last September when more than 12,000 of Colombia’s sugar cutters staged a 58-day strike demanding better labour conditions.

Organizers, including Oney, called the strike after repeated failed attempts to negotiate with the owners of the sugar mills. The strike started at what the workers call “hour zero,” in the early morning of September 15, 2008.

“A few days before the work stoppage, when the rumours were going around that there would be a strike, the mills were completely militarized through a presidential decree,” explains Adriana Ferrer, a lawyer with the Bogotá-based human-rights organization Maestra Vida. “The public forces in the Cauca Valley and Cauca were exclusively dedicated to looking after the private capital of the sugar mills.” On the first day of the strike, the ESMAD (Colombia’s version of a SWAT team) attacked the workers while they blockaded the region’s refineries. Several workers were injured that day, but they managed to fend off the initial attack and maintain the strike for another 57 days. The central demand of the cutters was to have the right to enter into direct contracts with the sugar companies, instead of continuing to be sub-contracted as co-operatives with fewer labour rights. Workers also petitioned for better wages, more tools, and access to adequate housing.

The strike came to an end after the sugar mills sat at the table with workers, who represented their co-operatives. The outcomes of the negotiations include a wage increase of 30 cents per tonne, pay cheques weekly instead of twice monthly, and a better supply of sharpeners and machetes; but the workers still didn’t get job security or achieve status as direct employees of the sugar mills.

The situation remains as tenuous as ever for organizers like Oney. I saw him again about a week after our first meeting at a hearing in Buga, a larger city in the Cauca Valley. The courtroom was standingroom only, with cane cutters, their customary red towels laid flat over their shoulders, spilling out onto the sidewalk and into Buga’s central park. The hearing related to the investigation into Oney, three other workers, and two people who assisted the workers in their strike.

The district attorney presiding over the hearing decided that formal charges on counts of conspiracy, assault, and sabotage would be pressed against the six accused. The evidence in the hands of the state consisted of the testimony of a worker and several plant owners.

After the court hearing, the cane cutters who were inside flooded out of the courtroom and crowded into the streets in front of the central park. They formed a circle around Ferrer and Juan Pablo Ochoa, one of the accused and an assistant to an opposition senator who supported the cane cutters during the strike.

“We are confident that they will not be found guilty,” stated Ferrer, acting as the accused men’s lawyer. “We are sure the charges will be dropped, because we know that what is going on is a frame-up. Nobody here was committing crimes. The only thing that any of us were doing was struggling in a just way for the rights of workers.” Before the cane cutters piled back into the buses that belong to their co-operatives, Ochoa issued a chilling warning about their safety. That same morning, just a short drive away from Buga, a man named Edwin Lagarda was killed by the Colombian Armed Forces.

Lagarda was driving a vehicle belonging to the Indigenous Regional Council of Cauca, the largest indigenous organization in Cauca. The army initially accused Lagarda of running a roadblock, even though Lagarda’s truck had at least 15 bullet holes in it from a variety of different angles. Commentators speculated that the army may have been attempting to kill Lagarda’s partner, Ayda Quilcué, a high-profile indigenous leader.

“We are also at risk,” said Ochoa. “It’s important that we are aware that this process isn’t against one worker or one assistant. It’s against all the workers of Cauca Valley and Cauca who are demanding respect for their rights.”

This is the regime that Canada stands to legitimize through opening up trade relations with a free trade agreement: a regime of intimidation, violence, and murder. And all for a deeply flawed trade deal that may actually hurt thousands of Canada’s own workers. While Colombia’s sugar barons and Canada’s transnational oil and mining industries stand to gain from the trade deal, sectors like the Canadian sugar industry, which directly employs more than 1,200 people in four provinces, stand to lose.

Bilateral agreements like the Canada-Colombia deal are “eating away at the market, and companies in Canada can’t make money on that market; they can’t make money, and they’ll have to close,” says Sandra Marsden, president of the Canadian Sugar Institute. The economic effects aside, there is no indication that the deal will help to improve human rights in Colombia.

“There is nothing in the agreement which provides for any sort of leverage to actually … halt the continued massacre of Colombians who simply are on a quest for a better life for themselves and for their co-workers,” writes the NDP’s Julian.

For workers like Oney and his team of cane cutters, the daily struggle to demand basic rights and dignity will continue to be a dangerous one.

“Dammit. Everybody should be looking to get in on the action this summer. There will be cheap gear, cheap actors, cheap crew. More access to locations. We should be gearing up for that now, Rob. Come to think of it, why aren’t we?” Jonathan Williams had been slouched in a large brown velvet lounge chair. Now his face is alight, imagining a chance to shoot in Toronto without having to compete with Hollywood studios for requisite resources. Given the attractive combo of a low dollar and tax incentives to film in Canada, Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal are usually packed with American film shoots come summer. The tell-tale white trailers take up entire city blocks. Not this year. The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) contract expires June 30, while contracts for the Writers Guild of America (WGA) are up May 1. Talks between unions and producers have been deadlocked for months. Industry experts anticipate a long strike down south, and a near complete shutdown of the Canadian industry.

For Canadian techies, this summer will probably look like a golf course with no one on it. Flat and empty. Just ask Paul Harding. He has been predicting the strike since last May, and he isn’t looking forward to it; he’s the president of IATSE, (the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees), which represents film technicians and artists, Toronto local 873.

But for Canadian directors and producers, this summer could be much happier. Robert Arber, 27, and Jonathan Williams, 26, make up Ember Films Inc., an independent Canadian film company based out of a large, dark and rather damp warehouse space in Toronto’s west end. Williams directs; Arber produces. In the three years that they’ve been working together, they’ve had some small success making arty short films. Now they’re trying to break into a broader market.

And it looks like they might get the chance to do it. Ember’s most recent project is The East Trail, a short piece about a man who gets lost in the woods and confronts his own mortality. The company was recently awarded a $5,000 production grant from the Ontario Arts Council. For once, Ember Films won’t have to put the project together while day jobbing on Hollywood shoots. And last October, Ottawa started up yet another megabuck Canadian film boosting initiative, the $100 million Canada Feature Film Fund, which provides assistance for screenwriting, production, marketing and promotion. Williams and Arber hope to tap this cash at a later date. “It’s all part and parcel of fanning the Ember into flames,” Williams quips.

“We’ve even gotten to work with actra members, at a much reduced rate,” he continues, sifting through piles of actors’ headshots that are spread out on the coffee table in front of him. “Usually, American shows are the only ones with the budgets to afford actra people,” says Williams. But now, ACTRA (Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists) has started up a new program, the Canadian Low-Budget Incentive for Performers and Producers (CLIPP) that allows Canadian filmmakers to work with actra members on the cheap. The new Feature Film Fund. actra’s reduced rates. Lack of competition from Hollywood movie shoots for moviemaking resources. An open market to promote your film once the thing actually does get made, due to a lack of Hollywood product. Seems like Williams is right. This summer might be a golden opportunity for Canadian filmmakers.

Except for one thing. Canadian films do not have a hope in hell of being shown in their home market.

Now, admittedly, there isn’t exactly going to be huge demand for a short film knocked off for $25 grand by an unknown company from Toronto. But factor in that last year, 98% of the movies shown on Canadian screens were foreign, mostly American-made. That’s the highest level of foreign filmage dominating the screens of any comparable country in the world. In this kind of market, not even international critical successes by established Canadian directors can make the slightest headway.

This February at the Genie Awards ceremony, Quebec director Denis Villeneuve went to the podium five times to accept awards for Maelstrom, his latest release. This acclaimed film ran for precisely two weeks in Toronto. And not at a big multiplex. At a downtown four-screener, and one other venue uptown. And it was barely seen at all outside major centres.

“I had a friend go and see it towards the end of the second week of its run,” says André Bennett, head of the Toronto-based distribution company Cinema Esperanca International. Bennett’s old company, Cinephile, distributed the early films of Atom Egoyan and Bruce McDonald among others. “[He said] there were maybe three people in the entire audience, an 800-seat theatre.”

Perhaps the Canadian film industry needs to take a tip from the music industry, and start putting a bit more thought and effort into getting a domestic audience for its products. How about Cancon rules for movie exhibitors, for example? Sure, Cancon in musicland led to the production of some serious dreck in the early days—and we can point to our fine feathery-haired friends in Honeymoon Suite and Frozen Ghost as examples—but Canada now has a thriving music industry both here at home, and internationally.

Cancon forced radio stations to give Canadian artists access to an audience—up to 35% of the airtime. This meant that labels had an interest in signing Canadian acts, who, in turn, were creating decent, accessible pop music. It’s not a success story on the level of the Canadian book business (46% of the books bought in this country are by Canadian authors, as compared to approximately 10% of the music bought here). Still, it’s better than the measly two percent of Canadian box office receipts that our flicks command.

“Cancon makes Canadians listen to tunes they otherwise probably wouldn’t get the chance to hear,” says Scot McFadyen, music supervisor for Feldman and Associates, the company that manages Joni Mitchell and Diana Krall, among others. “it’s a bit coercive, but it seems to have worked.” So why can’t we do the same for Canadian film?

Since the beginnings of the Canadian film industry, Hollywood studios have treated Canadian moviegoers as part of the domestic U.S. market. Way back in the early 1900s, Canadian distributor-exhibitors the Allen Bros., founders of Famous Players, built a string of majestic screens across the country. After constructing some of the world’s most ornate cinemas, the Allens sold their screen time directly to Hollywood studios, for a quick return on their investment.

Fast-forward to NAFTA, and large Hollywood studios still have a lock on the $322 million-plus that Canadians spend on moviegoing annually. These not-to-be-sneezed-at profits then go straight back to Hollywood, underwriting the production of more big budget American flicks.

Take Titanic, for example. Its budget has been estimated at a cool $200 million, approximately $25 million of which went to promotion. (Just for perspective, the average Canadian feature budget is in the $3 million range. Budgets for Hollywood flicks are at least 10 times that amount.) Titanic grossed $600 million in the U.S. and upwards of $1.8 billion worldwide.

American flicks don’t all have marketing budgets of such, um, titantic proportions, but a good chunk of every Hollywood film budget is spent on promotion—$37 million on average—to lucrative effect. When you consider that the overall budget for Atom Egoyan’s 1997 feature, The Sweet Hereafter, was $4 million, with a total gross of around $10 million so far, you start to see how uneven the playing field really is.

“You can’t go to see a movie you haven’t heard about, and an exhibitor won’t take a chance on a movie no one knows. A week-long ad in The Globe and Mail isn’t really going to have quite the same impact [as a million-dollar campaign],” sighs Bennett.

Once a movie is distributed to rent-paying, popcorn-underwriting multiplexes, the situation becomes even more economically black-and-white. First off, everybody knows when new American movies come to town, and why it might be worth plunking down $10 to go see them. Canadian director Patricia Rozema’s award-winning 1987 movie, I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, wasn’t even shown in her hometown of Sarnia, because the theatre owner had never heard of it.

Canada’s market is also dominated by two powerful exhibitors, who select which films Canadians get to see. Together, Cineplex Odeon and Famous Players control about 75% of the screens nationwide. In the U.S., by contrast, the top two cinema chains control only 20% of the screens. Moreover, theatre exhibitors rely on their major suppliers for product. That relationship is, economically speaking, far more important to the owner of a multiplex than a relationship with an indie Canadian distributor. “Even if a Canadian movie is doing well at the box office,” explains Bennett “an exhibitor will bump it if a major wants that screen for a new Hollywood release.”

How to resolve this situation? Just look at France, Germany, Spain and Britain. All these countries produce movies that are critically and commercially successful both at home and abroad. These success stories were made possible, in part, by screen quotas. Take Spain as an example. Spanish screens must show one domestic film for every three foreign ones. This is enforced through a licensing system. For every 10 million pesetas (about $83,000 cdn) that a Spanish movie makes, that exhibitor can apply for a licence to dub and show a foreign movie at the same venue. Moreover, 15% of the exhibitors’ profits then go back into a production fund for Spanish filmmakers.

Spanish exhibitors thus have a real economic incentive to send money back into the fund, as it is only by showing domestic movies and promoting them effectively, that they will make the quotas to obtain the licences that allow them to show mega-buck-pulling Hollywood blockbusters.

By contrast, Canadian exhibitors tend to show whatever films they think will put the most bums in seats. And, until very recently, Canadian distributors had no financial investment in, and hence no financial incentive to promote or market, the Canadian films they distributed.

The government, through Telefilm, underwrote the distributors’ costs through minimum distribution fees. “The distributor had no real stake in recouping the money,” explains local screenwriter and director Harper Quantrill.

This may change with the new Feature Film Fund, which provides assistance in production, distribution, marketing, screenwriting and promotion. In addition, the financing will be awarded to producers and distributors through matching funds based on box office performance.

Great stuff: but it still doesn’t address the exhibition problem. If exhibitors are still choosing between screening a Hollywood bonanza-pic, or banking on word-of-mouth buzz to pitch a movie about school buses going off roads and turning Sarah Polley into a paraplegic, they will probably continue to plump for the Hollywood cash cow.

This problem isn’t new. In fact, every culture minister since Louis St. Laurent has been trying to roll back American movies from Canadian screens. Flora MacDonald, communications minister under Brian Mulroney’s Conservatives, was the last to take a crack at this. MacDonald’s 1987 Federal Distribution Bill (FDB) aimed to increase the number of domestic films on Canadian screens by 15%.

Reaction down south? The Hollywood majors freaked. The Motion Picture Association of America hauled out its heavy artillery, in the form of industry heavyweight and association head Jack Valenti, who successfully lobbied former President Reagan against the bill. Reagan told Mulroney to kill the bill, or risk jeopardizing the then-upcoming Free Trade Agreement. The FDB eventually disappeared in parliamentary committee.

So what did we end up with? Instead of increased screen time for Canadian films in our cinemas, NAFTA negotiators cobbled together the now-infamous cultural exemption clause. This clause, negotiated by the Chrétien government, allows Canadian taxpayers the privilege of subsidizing Hollywood’s labour costs up north, to the tune of 11% of a movie’s Canadian labour costs.

Each province also has considerable Canadian content incentive programs that have in the past also gone to fund American pap: for some unfathomable reason, the made-for-tv (and aptly titled) Dennis Rodman biopic, Bad As I Wanna Be, qualified for Cancon funding, as well as labour credits. Combine that with a lower dollar, and you have a homegrown Canadian film industry that actively encourages branch plant moviemaking. We now churn out non-creative staff—technicians, gaffers, grips and location scouts—by the thousands. Meanwhile, the influx of well-financed American shows ends up discouraging local production companies from working on Canadian flicks.

Heritage Minister Sheila Copps did try to roll back the 11% labour credit in 1998, proposing instead a plan for a box office tax on foreign movies. The proceeds from this tax would then be plowed into a homegrown production and distribution fund. Techie unions like IATSE, who feared for their jobs, fiercely opposed Copps’s initiative.

Too bad no one considered what might happen if head office shut down. With the SAG and WGA strikes looming, an awful lot of IATSE technicians are going to be looking for other work this summer, or signing up for EI.

Oddly enough, Toronto union local prez Paul Harding now seems to think that having local homegrown studios as fallback employment sources for his technicians is the answer to the current crisis. Yet when asked about his union’s anti-Copps tactics in 1998—opposing a policy which presumably was attempting to create the financial wherewithal to ‘grow’ those studios—he goes on the defensive. “That’s old news. Entirely academic. Has no bearing whatsoever on the current situation,” he snaps.

On the other side of the equation, McFadyen, who spends much of his professional life hustling for cash to put together authentically Canuck productions, isn’t sure Cancon will be able to address the industry’s hypersensitivity to fluctuations in the American market. “Because that would take a total industry reconfiguration,” he said over the phone from his office, where he is currently putting together the soundtrack for Bruce McDonald’s latest flick.

McFadyen is right on one level. Right now, the industry is massively oriented towards servicing Hollywood. And the set up is nothing if not profitable for below-the-line workers (Hollywood’s term for “non-creative” film staff). U.S. production companies spent $890 million (Canadian) last year in Toronto alone. That’s not small change, and under normal circumstances, almost impossible to pass up.

Still, given the prognosis for this summer, it might not be a bad idea to start discussing other ways of developing our talent. As Quantrill points out, growing an industry comprised largely of Canadian film technicians is not really a viable proposition. “You need money and equipment to keep those people employed. Take away the outside financing, take away the equipment, and you don’t really have an industry.” Figuring ou
t a way to increase market share for Canadian productions through some sort of screen quota system, and plowing the resulting funds back into homegrown studios, might just be the answer.

After 25 years of Cancon for music, Canadian music artists are now taking off, with strong support from a domestic population. We probably would not have international phenoms like Sarah McLachlan or Barenaked Ladies without the early years of licensing airtime for Glass Tiger and Corey Hart.

The Canadian film industry continues to produce movies that are chronically underfunded, perversely regulated and denied access to their own market. In the long term, the industry is neither healthy, nor sustainable. Perhaps now, Canadian film workers and culturecrats will have the time and energy to think hard about the relative merits of this unique situation. Who knows? Rethinking Canada’s film industry over a summer slowdown might be the best thing that ever happened to it.