Woods Gordon Report, Accountability, and the Postwar Reconstruction of the National Film Board of Canada, The

Journal of Canadian Studies, Winter 2008 by Wagman, Ira

If the question posed by the headline was whether or not the Film Board would stand up to this latest "test," the mam body of the article proposed a potential solution. It suggested that the developments at the NFB shot "the government monopoly so tall of holes" that an overhaul of the entire structure of support to the film sector should also be in order (Financial Post 1949). The critique of the Film Board's affairs in the Financial Post comprised six components: 1) the NFB's tendency to charge "high prices and special charges for production"; 2) an apparent lack of co-operation between the Film Board and its client agencies within government; 3) an inability to gather a "firm bid" on production costs from senior Film Board officials; 4) long delays to receive finished production and the practice of "un-bustaesslike methods"; 5) the Film Board's use of pressure tactics to restrain competition for government contracts and force screenings of its films; and 6) taefficient production methods that resulted m "extravagant waste" (Financial Post 1949). This sextet of complaints fell into two broad categories-institational intransigence and fiscal mismanagement-that would become prominent themes in attacks lodged against the NFB. To support its arguments, the Post relied on the report of the auditor general, which pointed to the high number of accounts receivable on the NFB's books and the slow rate of collection by the Film Board's administrative staff as markers of administrative sloppiness (Financial Post 1949).

This last assessment represented a politicization of accounting terminology. If the NFB were a bustaess operation, the total number of outstanding accounts and the high number of unpaid accounts receivable, along with the Film Board's lassitude in retrieving the funds, would be markers of tastitational sloppiness and financial precariousness. Both "accounts" and "accounts receivable" are abstract terms, however, that become problematic only when the future existence of the organization is at stake and when the "year-end" of a bustaess organization is of particular interest. When dislocated from this context and repositioned as standardized accounting terms in a business publication, such concepts equated the Film Board with wastefulness or sloth.

Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent's disappointment over the leaked report has prompted numerous theories about how the Financial Post learned about the story. Some believe the paper was sympathetic to members of the private business community who were upset over the NFB's past dealings and the Film Board's plans for expansion into television production.3 Although this represents a plausible explanation, it is important to point out that concerns regarding the future direction of the NFB in the postwar era did not begin with the publication of the article in the Financial Post. After the board's first director, John Grierson, stepped down in 1945 to take the job of director of UNESCO's mass communication office in Paris, questions persisted about whether his replacement, Ross McLean, was fit to run the Film Board. The minister for National Revenue, JJ. McCann, admitted to Vincent Massey that an overhaul was necessary to correct numerous administrative deficiencies. Others pointed to the fact that the NFB operated m decaying buildings, making for unsafe work conditions (Winters 1949b).