Blog - Movies

After the government press conference held this afternoon to announce new tax incentives for the film and digital media industries, NDP arts and tourism critic Spencer Herbert said by phone that he's glad that the government has finally adopted most of the proposals that his party has been calling for since last July. "It's unfortunate that it took this long because we've lost hundreds of millions of dollars in production this year, and many, many jobs."

He said he is "quite happy" that the government has taken action on the video game sector because when he had asked the ministers of technology and culture in the House about doing something like that, neither had heard of such an idea.

However, he remains concerned that there were no provisions made to address the domestic film industry. "They haven't done anything to support B.C.–based filmmakers. So [for] filmmakers, for example, making Canadian television series, there's some help. But we're still in that sense very uncompetitive with Ontario…If we want a truly sustainable film and television industry here, we need to build up and support our domestic filmmakers for Canadian television shows or for Canadian movies, but this announcement doesn't do that. It doesn't help us build that sustainable industry."

By developing a stronger domestic industry, the local film scene would be less susceptible to sudden drops in activity levels caused by foreign productions (primarily American) leaving British Columbia for other destinations. Herbert pointed out that in Ontario, the situation is reversed, where the majority of the productions are Canadian.

In a question-and-answer session, finance minister Colin Hansen clarified that the tax incentives announced today were regarding service (or foreign) productions. "There is a different tax credit structure for domestic films, which is slightly more generous than tax credits for foreign films," he explained.

Herbert, however, doubted that domestic tax structures are viable enough. "According to the domestic folks that I've talked to, that's not the case. That yes, there's a tax structure here for domestic film, but it's not competitive with Ontario, and Ontario's a big competitor in terms of domestic production. It kind of puts us in range of Ontario two years ago."

Another main point made in the proposals declared on Sunday was not addressed in today's announcement. "One thing that we called on the government to do," Herbert said, "was the Intellectual Property Development Fund, which is something that Ontario has, and really helps bring more dollars in the province because if we had that fund provincially, we'd be able to tap into federal dollars in the Canada Media Fund, and build up our domestic industry and tell British Columbian stories. That kind of incentive is not there. So we will continue to see most Canadian stories and most Canadian film and television shows out of Ontario."