Allan Rock meets with CFTPA on Western Canada tour to discuss new media

Industry Canada minister Allan Rock is apparently working to increase his slight profile in the new media community with a series of meetings and announcements in the past weeks. The minister, who has played second fiddle to date to Canadian Heritage minister Sheila Copps in the interactive digital media community, has been eager to reach out to the cultural community, starting with an August 9 meeting with the Canadian Film and Television Production Association (CFTPA) in Vancouver that was well-received by participants. The meeting, an informal and intimate roundtable of various government and industry representatives, was held at Rock’s behest. It included CFTPA president/CEO Elizabeth McDonald, chair Julia Keatley and VP of the B.C. producers’ branch Leanore Copeland, as well as Brightlight Pictures’ Shawn Williamson and Rob Bromley of Force Four Productions. On the government side, Rock was joined by Herb Dhaliwal, minister of Natural Resources, and Stephen Owen, secretary of state for Western Economic Diversification (WED). McDonald tells Canadian NEW MEDIA the meeting was productive and that Rock appears poised to listen to and help the industry as far as he’s able. A brief note in the CFTPA’s newsletter notes that the group was able to lobby for an expansion of the Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax credit, and to tout the benefits of economic and research clusters such as is found at the New Media Innovation Centre (NewMIC). In return, Rock emphasized the need to protect intellectual property through the use of copyright – likely a reference to the department’s work on Bill C-48 and Internet retransmission (see story in this issue), and acknowledged the possibility of creating tax structures to benefit the new media industry. Participants also bounced around the idea of a national film commission, expanding the availability of broadband services to Canadians, making interactive skills and content relevant to Canadians, and product development funding. Though several items were on the agenda, McDonald was most impressed at the minister’s willingness to reach out to the community to find ways his department can help. "I think they’re just looking for how they can help," she says. "What can they do? What can they do to help stabilize companies? Where is the potential? What are the issues? I can’t tell you how much I thought it was a learning session and, from our perspective, very much about how you build companies. That’s one of the industrial strategies that we need to complement the cultural strategy. I think he was very interested in that and learned a lot from that." Particularly impressive, she says, was that Rock made the overture during the summer Parliamentary hiatus and appeared to take a strong personal interest in the topics of discussion. "To see a minister not wait for someone else to take the notes, but for him to take the notes – for him to ask the questions in conferencing with him afterward – we’ll be having further dialog with him…but this is somebody who wants to do something and is listening and is trying to find ways that will build an industry." McDonald notes, though, that Rock was also candid about the limitations of his department’s role in dealing with cultural content. "He saw the industry/culture link and made it quite clear that, ‘I need to speak with Sheila Copps on some of this,’ and on some of the things he can do to support her initiatives." Rock’s timing for a meeting with the CFTPA in B.C. is notable, and McDonald says was likely done to coincide with new concerns in the province about difficulties in other industries such as softwood lumber. It won’t be lost on any observers either that Rock is in the early stages of a run for the leadership of the Liberal Party and will need the support of industry players. To date, his colleague Copps has garnered the most explicit support of the cultural industries, though that could weaken if Industry Canada can make effective use of its far larger funding mechanisms. Unlike his high-profile predecessor John Manley, Rock has not had the chance yet to establish himself as an über-competent, if low-key, manager of the department with a hands-on familiarity with the issues. And, unlike the bombastic Brian Tobin, Rock has left it to Copps to make the lion’s share of reassuring statements on Internet retransmission to broadcasters and other copyright holders in the House of Commons and elsewhere. In the past weeks, however, his department, through Western Economic Diversification and the Technology Partnerships Canada program, has opened the coffers to new media initiatives in the west. As part of Rock’s western tour, it was announced that TPC would make a $6.37-million repayable investment in Intrisyc Software Inc. On August 9, WED announced $828,000 in funding for NewMIC’s immersive media laboratory, $750,000 for a new human/computer interaction lab (CNM, Aug. 21/02). Also on August 9, WED announced $81,500 for New Media BC. Minister Rock’s office did not make him available for comment about the CFTPA meeting.

Allan Rock meets with CFTPA on Western Canada tour to discuss new media

News | 09/18/2002 4:00 am EDT

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