A Tale of Two Governments

WORKING ON A new series is always an amazing, upward learning curve. The first steps when you get in the room, and take that Bible that sold the show and try to figure out how to get it on its feet and translate that selling document to series; the back and forth as a new writing team tries to gel and find their way; the kludge-together let's start something here as production comes together, producers toil, and a creator tries to open up and shift that thinking from "let's make a pilot" to "let's make a series..." with enthusiasm and hope and tenacity and generosity of spirit intact...

It's all possibility at this point. And professionals who smile and try to conceal the excitement..."is this really going to happen?" "Are we really doing this?"

The exciting becomes transcendant when you find yourself in a place that's new and exciting to you. I felt this way when I first went to South Africa. I feel it again here in St. John's.

It happens in little ways, as you peel back and discover other elements of the culture that makes this rugged land and this beautiful city so very, very different. It happens when you drive winding roads and look out to sea and see your first Iceberg. It happens when your charismatic lead actor and Executive Producer reminds you that he's a first-generation Canadian; the son of people born into the separate nation of Newfoundland. It happens as you contemplate the hundred different little ways the culture here is different, yet undeniably alive. It makes you think, think of all the other places you've been in this great nation -- Alberta, where they never met a U.S. idea they didn't like, and where they hate the CBC like it's a religious rite. I think of the Calgarians I know who seem as surrounded as liberals in Austin, Texas. I think of Vancouver, aloof and a little smug about its beauty and wonder; as I stare now out the window at its easy equal. I think of winding stone streets in Vieux Montreal, the steps leading up to the Chateau in Quebec City. I think of the few days I spent up in Thunder Bay, another few in Halifax, the sunny times spent on Parliament Hill or wandering the Byward Market in Ottawa. I close my eyes and picture the ferry ride to Vancouver Island, lovely and still through the summer fog of morning. I recall my own teeming, shiny, stinky and occasionally humid Toronto, and how beautiful and majestic the Legislature looked at night the one time I visited Regina, and viewed the place where Medicare began. I think of this wonderful, different, vibrant country -- its parts seemingly ever at war or resentment with each other.

And as I prepare to help craft stories that show off one beautiful part the way it hasn't been shown before, all I can think of is what a gift Canadians miss by not being able to see stories told about all the funky, silly, crazy, wondrous, scary, nifty and puzzling people I've met in all these wonderful cities in this great and vast and puzzling land.

I think of how this short-sighted debate has been going on for some time. And I think about how little Canadians know of their own government. Little enough that they misunderstand the very process of parliamentary democracy itself. And I curse again the colonized culture that makes those lessons invisible. And then I realize: that's not strictly true. Ontarians don't know a lot. Albertans think they know, but honestly, I've looked -- it's a photocopy or an American ideal of the west. B.C. just hates Toronto. Right now I'm in a place that understands the value of its culture -- and just coincidentally it's a place where the culture has been ridiculed by the rest of Canada for a long time.

So it was today that this was read out in the legislature of the great Province of Newfoundland and Labrador:

The Canadian Broadcast Corporation recently approved its upcoming television season lineup, and confirmed that a one-hour father-son police drama, entitled Republic of Doyle, will be among the new shows featured next year.

Republic of Doyle is one of the biggest budget television series ever produced in Canada – and the 12 episodes commissioned to date will be filmed right here in Newfoundland and Labrador.

This is an unprecedented opportunity for our film industry, and for film industry workers in this province. We recognized this when the producers approached us last year with a view to securing our financial support in making the television series a reality.

The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador has committed $1.5 million in film equity funding to the project in Budget 2009 to ensure this province accrues the maximum benefits from this television production. The size of this production will also enable producers to avail of approximately $3 million through the Newfoundland and Labrador Film and Video Tax Credit.

Therefore, the direct commitment from the Provincial Government in Republic of Doyle is $4.5 million, with economic spin-off activities estimated to result in about $11.3 million in benefits to the local economy.

Contrast that with the fabulous recent efforts of our central, National government.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Ottawa, these guys, and these guys and these guys continue to fight a battle over millions, where the only surety is that at some point they're going to complain about the need to throw breadcrumbs to support the very process I'm starting right now here in St. John's.

It's a pretty stomach-churning display. It's one of those times that I'm very glad to be very far away, where the sound of the sea drowns out the sound of money, and the local culture can be seen, felt, and heard all about you. It exists in Canada.

At least in parts of it, it does.