BC NDP leader Adrian Dix was in Los Angeles meeting with production company executives on why they choose British Columbia for filming: it’s our world-class film crews and our locations. In British Columbia, production companies only receive 33% in payroll and labour costs.Any production accountant and production manager will choose the cheaper option and have their production filmed in Toronto or Montreal. The film industry is a multi-billion dollar industry here in British Columbia, commercial and other industries depend on the film industry.
Yet the premier doesn’t believe that’s the case. She says it’s not “sustainable” for our economy… Wait? How is it not sustainable when film brings in more business where they spend quite a lot of money? Not to mention local municipalities get extra revenue streams for charging film productions location fees.
Adrian Dix hasn’t said anything on what an NDP government would do. It’s pretty frustrating when politicians are politicizing people’s jobs. No one has came forward with an answer.
Come on Adrian and Christy!
The Anth Zone 
I think “not sustainable” means that the money that the production companies spend here doesn’t make up for the tax money the government gives to these production companies to encourage them to come here. This “trickle-down” theory has been debunked in other circumstances; is there evidence that it works in the movie business?
Also, as I’ve often said, we don’t have a movie industry in Vancouver; we have an American television industry. Should our province bribe foreign corporations to come here, thereby pricing crews and locations out of the reach of Canadian producers?
If the provincial government wants to spend British Columbians’ money to encourage a movie industry, perhaps we could also encourage local control of that industry while simultaneously investing in our own culture instead of the Americans’. Maybe take the same money and put it into some kind of production fund — perhaps give BC companies matching funding for the money they raise themselves.
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