The Partner's Film Company honcho Don McLean has long been a fixture on the Canadian commercial production scene. Boards spoke with him regarding hard times, free trade and working in Quebec.

McLean says 2001 was characterized by "four or five pretty good months and six or seven pretty rotten months," and despite an upswing in board flow at the beginning of 2002, the future remains uncertain.

"Margins and sales are down, and budgets continue to be pretty unrealistic for what is wanted, but production companies keep throwing themselves on the sword and take on projects they know can't make money," says McLean.

A dip in the bread and butter work from packaged goods companies such as P&G or Colgate have made it more difficult for Canadian production companies to swallow losses when it comes to underfunded creative scripts.

"That stuff kept you alive and you could take a flier on beer or other high-end creative," says McLean. "It's an old, old thought but until clients can convince the agencies to write to budget, which they haven't in the last 45 years, it is never going to go away."

On top of this, McLean says a dip in the number of US work being shot in Canada has slowed things down for most production companies.

"We need the return of the US work. Winter is not the best time to drag them up here except for studio or interior locations; right now South Africa, New Zealand and Australia are benefiting more than Canada. Hopefully roadhouse jobs will return by spring if this fervor of "Let's keep it in the States" may dissipate. The Canadian dollar is still a factor though. US commercials don't have the budgets they used to, so US production companies will have to continually find places to make spots with a few bucks left over. If a company in the US has US$200,000 to make a spot that is a US$300-400,000 project, the only place they can come to do this is Vancouver or Toronto."

The other major film city in Canada, Montreal is another matter. The largest city in the predominantly French-speaking province of Canada, Montreal is home to most of the agencies marketing to the francophone population. As such, access to these boards demands active representation in the Montreal market. With this in mind, Partners has signed a repping agreement with Montreal's Kissfilm. Kissfilm takes over from Montreal's Jet Films, the company previously responsible for Partners' directors in Montreal.