Netflix pulls sponsorship of development programs across Canadian arts institutions | Canada Voices

The future of several professional development programs crucial to the health of the Canadian film and television industry are in jeopardy as Netflix Canada pulls sponsorship from a number of arts institutions.

Various cultural organizations across the country learned last week that Netflix was pausing funding for a number of training and development initiatives. Since 2017, the year that the streaming giant established its Canadian production arm, Netflix has invested more than $25-million in such programs, helping further the careers of more than 1,200 Canadian writers, directors, producers and performers.

“This is extremely disappointing as Netflix was a significant and founding supporter of the Pacific Screenwriting Program, in line with their commitment to Canadian talent development,” said Camilla Tibbs, executive director of Vancouver’s PSP, whose flagship Scripted Series Lab has for the past six years launched the careers of emerging B.C. screenwriters, particularly diverse voices.

At Hot Docs, which is currently undergoing an organizational restructuring while facing a series of financial setbacks, organizers said that without Netflix’s support, they may have to discontinue three programs: Canadian Storytellers Project, CrossCurrents Doc Funds, and Incubator Labs, which have collectively supported hundreds of filmmakers’ careers.

And at the imagineNATIVE Institute, where Netflix has funded upward of 90 per cent of the organization’s year-round development programs, the streamer has indicated that any resources beyond 2025 are in doubt.

“I’ve been very grateful for their support, which since 2020 has been able to help more than 50 Indigenous professionals working in the screen media,” said Naomi Johnson, imagineNATIVE’s executive director. “All of us running not-for-profit arts organizations are contending with rising costs, so this now means more hustling in the private sector. And the pure volume of work in that kind of fundraising is exhausting.”

The shift comes as Netflix and other foreign-owned streaming services are being compelled by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to contribute 5 per cent of their annual domestic revenues to support production in the Canadian screen sector as part of the Online Streaming Act (Bill C-11). In July, the Motion Picture Association-Canada, which represents Netflix as well as such Hollywood studios as Disney and Paramount, launched dual legal challenges in Federal Court over the CRTC measures.

In an unsigned statement regarding the pause in program funding, representatives for Netflix Canada said that “despite our long-standing commitment, the government has chosen not to acknowledge our substantial support for the Canadian film and TV sector. Consequently, we will be unable to continue funding many of the programs that have come to rely on our backing, as we are now required to allocate resources to meet the CRTC’s new investment mandate.”

In a November, 2023, CRTC public hearing, during which Netflix noted that it spends more in Canada on partnerships for the career advancement of creators than anywhere else in the world, Dean Garfield, vice-president of global public policy for the streamer, said that there needed to be flexibility in how the government recognizes its contributions to the local screen sector.

“If you develop a system that limits the areas or the funds to which those resources are directed, then in some respects you’re creating a zero-sum game where you may have to move away from the relationships, partnerships that we built over time, and we certainly don’t want to do that,” Garfield said.

Angela Heck, executive director of the Whistler Film Festival Society, whose producers and screenwriters labs are now at risk over Netflix’s decision, noted that the streamer has been a supportive partner since 2018, with its contributions in some years funding up to 50 per cent of its program costs.

“They’re just responding to the ambiguity of the current legislation,” said Heck. “I think it’s not clear under current guidelines whether or not something like training initiatives are eligible expenditures. Maybe we don’t do a good enough job tooting our own horn as to how important these programs actually are.”

Like other arts leaders, Heck is concerned about not only the future of her organization’s programs but also the longer-term consequences for an industry already under economic stress.

“I’m nervous about the knock-on effects,” she said. “I always talk about the training programs as being the farm team. You can give funding to producers all you want, but if you don’t train people and bring them up through the system, we won’t have people who can succeed.”