Cheryl Hodder appointed Film Nova Scotia board of directors chair

The Film Nova Scotia board of directors has a new chair.

Cheryl Hodder is a partner and Nova Scotia regional manager at law firm McInnes Cooper. She practises administrative law, education law, and corporate governance and serves on the nominating committee of the Nova Scotia Community College, is the program chair of the Atlantic Chapter of the Canadian Institute of Corporate Directors and is the director and treasurer of Lex Mundi.

Other board members at Film Nova Scotia include Judy Steele, chartered accountant and VP finance for Emera, Susan Doss, a senior fellow at the University of King's College and Gordon Anderson, a member of the Chignecto Central Regional School Board.

While I'm sure these folks' academic and financial expertise is unimpeachable, I do have a question: Why it is a crown corporation overseeing public funds allotted to help support a lucrative creative industry with so many particulars unique to itself not have someone on its board with experience in the very business it oversees? Say, a producer or a bureaucrat who's worked on a set or in a film office once in their life?

This is a question that could be asked of the Film Nova Scotia staff, too. It's one that has often been posed to me, albeit rhetorically, in my experience talking to people who work in the film industry in Nova Scotia: Why does the government have people in charge of film funding who have no experience in local film production?

These questions I've been unable to answer. Any thoughts?