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Changes Needed for Film Biz (in Business Vancouver Island)

The film industry in British Columbia has made terrific headway in the last few years with overall production spending now reaching $1.2 billion. That’s a $250 million increase over last year; great growth!

However, those numbers are not reflective of what is happening in the Capital Region. In the Capital Region, the film industry has suffered a significant decrease. In 2005, the industry in the Capital Region brought in $28 million in revenue, but by 2008 that revenue had deceased to just $7.3 million.

There are a few reasons for the reduction in filming in the Capital Retion over the last number of years but one of the important ones is the structure of various filming tax credits in the province.

In 2003, the province introduced a Regional Incentive Tax Credit, to encourage film makers to venture outside of the core of Vancouver. This credit was applied to an area just outside of Vancouver, as far as Hope to the East and Whistler to the North on the mainland and to the Capital Region. The incentive worked - but only for mainland locations. Film makers were able to go just outside of Vancouver to film and back to production studios in the city’s core to complete production work. They could not do that from the Island. Consequently, the volume of filming and production increased on the mainland, and decreased on the Island and production talent here migrated to the more steady steam of work in the Vancouver area. 

To mitigate the impact of this unintended consequence, the industry asked government to introduce a tax incentive to encourage filming in more distant locations than those covered by the regional tax credit. The province agreed and introduced the Distance Location Tax Credit which now applies to all other areas of the province, in general terms, east of Hope and North of Whistler, and all of Vancouver Island with the exception on the Capital Region. As a result, the Distance Location Tax Credit has only further eroded filming for the Capital Region and the industry is truly on its last legs here.

If the erosion continues in the Capital Region it could unfortunately impact on the Island’s industry as a whole. As in any industry, talent follows the bulk of work. Should filming opportunities dry up in the Capital Region, crews and production talent will take their skills elsewhere, making working on the Island even less attractive.

Film industry representatives and the business community in Greater Victoria are actively addressing this issue with government. We are confident that we will see a change in the boundary definition on this policy that will level the playing field across the province and re-invigorate the industry in the Capital Region. It is after all a very good policy that is benefiting the industry as a whole and enlarging the area that is included will add to provincial growth overall.

Articles - 2010

Articles - 2009