Telefilm has faced extensive backlash in recent weeks after Canadian independent filmmaker Pavan Moondi, who is now based in Los Angeles, raised questions about the organization’s selection criteria for funding and demanded clarity around its diversity standards. This criticism is nothing new as many other ethnic filmmakers including award-winning feature and documentary filmmaker R. Paul Dhillon, who has for years called for equity in doling out funding that is 95 percent plus handed out to white Canadian filmmakers. Dhillon also presented former Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez with a proposal titled DIVERSITY FEATURE FILM FUND (https://www.rpauldhillon.com/2020/06/diversity-feature-film-fund-prepared-by.html) as well as writing an editorial piece titled EMPTY DIVERSITY (https://www.rpauldhillon.com/2020/07/empty-diversity-theres-lot-of-hot-air.html ), which criticized the lack of support for diverse projects from Telefilm, Canadian broadcasters and even government funded film festivals that do not showcase diverse Canadian stories. 

By DESIBUZZCanada Staff

TORONTO – Telefilm Canada has launched a misconduct investigation following allegations made by an Indo-Canadian filmmaker against one of its senior employees.

Telefilm has faced extensive backlash in recent weeks after Canadian independent filmmaker Pavan Moondi, who is now based in Los Angeles, raised questions about the organization’s selection criteria for funding and demanded clarity around its diversity standards.

This criticism is nothing new as many other ethnic filmmakers including award-winning feature and documentary filmmaker R. Paul Dhillon, who has for years called for equity in doling out funding that is 95 percent plus handed out to white Canadian filmmakers. Dhillon also presented former Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez with a proposal titled DIVERSITY FEATURE FILM FUND (https://www.rpauldhillon.com/2020/06/diversity-feature-film-fund-prepared-by.html) as well as writing an editorial piece titled EMPTY DIVERSITY (https://www.rpauldhillon.com/2020/07/empty-diversity-theres-lot-of-hot-air.html ), which criticized the lack of support for diverse projects from Telefilm, Canadian broadcasters and even government funded film festivals that do not showcase diverse Canadian stories. 

The current investigation against Dan Lyon, Telefilm’s feature film executive for Ontario and Nunavut, began after Moondi — a former “Schitt’s Creek” story editor and writer-director of feature films such as 2017’s “Sundowners” — took to Twitter on July 3 to share his experiences Lyon, whom Moondi named in an extensive thread that used screenshots of a recent email exchange between the two.

Telefilm Canada confirmed recently that it has decided to launch an investigation into the allegations of misconduct made against Lyon. It said to ensure that the process remains independent, the investigation has been entrusted to a third party, the firm le Cabinet RH, a bilingual consulting firm specializing in psychological and/or sexual harassment complaints, as well as discrimination-based complaints with clients across Canada. The objective of this investigation will be to assess the facts reported concerning the actions of our employee and to assess our complaints process in order to determine whether it is adequate for information of this nature.

“As an org, Telefilm makes it a point to ensure that the behavior of our employees is exemplary both internally and with respect to our partners and our clients. Inappropriate behavior of any kind is not tolerated. We take these allegations very seriously,” said the org.

In the correspondence between Lyon and Moondi, the pair sparred over Telefilm’s rejection of Moondi’s funding application for comedy “Christmas Is For Pageants,” which had been turned down on the grounds of the script not being “production ready.” In the same email, Lyon also says, “As you are aware, we are participating in the industry-wide mandate towards gender parity, which makes the situation even more competitive for projects with an all-male key creative team.”

The wider argument centred on a perceived ambiguity around Telefilm’s diversity criteria, and how it may limit opportunities for filmmakers of color, reported Variety Magazine.

“I’d like to make another film again one day, and the people calling the shots at Telefilm have not earned our trust that they will do anything of value about diversity,” said Moondi in a subsequent tweet. “If it takes you nearly four years to ‘define diversity’ then you do not deserve our trust.”

As Moondi’s Twitter thread gained traction online, other allegations of impropriety against Lyon have since emerged. Actor-producer Melissa D’Agostino alleged on Twitter that Lyon had made a sexually inappropriate comment to her when discussing a potential meeting at Telefilm. She discussed her experience, without naming Lyon, in Daphne Simone’s 2019 documentary “#MeAfterToo” — an excerpt of which she posted online.

Earlier in the week, BIPOC TV & Film, a grassroots organization and collective of Black, Indigenous and People of Color in Canada’s TV and film industry, called for transparency in how Canadian funding is allocated.

BIPOC and a number of Canadian film festivals asked Telefilm to supply information on how many Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour filmmakers and production companies have been granted funding in the past five years and how the money has been distributed (i.e. grants above CAD$500,000, CAD$1.2 million and CAD$2.5 million).

Telefilm responded on July 8, noting that it couldn’t provide detailed information because the data “was not collected.” The org instead provided corporate data collected during a recent COVID-19 funding round for underrepresented communities. This data showed that underrepresented groups comprised 50% of the total companies who applied for funding, though there is considerable variation across the minority groups.