Canada Enjoys Film Production Boom as Hollywood Fumes
June 2, 1999 - 0:0
TORONTO -- On any given day, police cars from New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and New Hampshire roll out of a dusty lot on Toronto's lakefront and onto the city's streets. They are here not to fight a crime wave in one of North America's safest cities but to surf the crest of a Hollywood-style production boom in Toronto and across Canada. "Every day we get a demand ... 90 percent of it is for U.S. productions," Michael Drysdale of the Avonhill Group said.
His company has been supplying vehicles for film sets for nearly 17 years -- everything from police paddy wagons to ambulances. While Hollywood fumes, producers are flocking north of the border, reeled in by the allure of a low Canadian dollar, skilled technicians and the chameleon-like Canadian landscape that can mirror virtually any U.S. setting. The numbers are still paltry by Los Angeles standards -- L.A. rakes in about c$25 billion a year from film production compared to c$1 billion generated from U.S. productions in Canada. But, image being everything when it comes to films, Canada appears to have an embarrassment of riches.
Over the past eight years film and television production activity in Canada leaped an astonishing 400 percent, thanks in no small part to American filmmaking, according to the Canadian Film and Television Production Association, a nonprofit trade group representing 300 producers. Group Works Hard to Bring Hollywood to Canada "Frankly the (association) works very hard to make sure (Hollywood) films and productions do come to Canada," spokeswoman Sylvie Powell said.
Every Canadian province now provides tax credits to the film industry, led by an aggressive federal government bent on enticing foreign filmmakers to Canada by offering production services tax credits on top of provincial goodies. While the British and French have eagerly accepted the handouts, the lion's share of foreign production has come from the United States. Hollywood has taken the bait, filming across Canada from Halifax, Nova Scotia -- a regular stand-in for maine -- to Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto, which actor Peter Ustinov once described as "New York run by the Swiss." Recent films made in Canada include "Pushing Tin" with Billy Bob Thornton and John Cusack, Maya Angelou's "Down in the Delta," on location in Nova Scotia, and "Seven Years in Tibet," which spent several weeks filming in British Columbia. Kleinburg, a sleepy town 50 minutes outside Toronto, is home to the White House, with two feature films, the Wesley Snipes Thriller "Murder at 1600" and "Dick," both using the Oval Office set up in a sound stage.
Even Canada's arctic region is getting in on the act with the launch of tax incentive programs in 1998. The Yukon has a travel rebate plus the usual labour ones, and they extend to commercials as well as films. "Dramatic Increase North of 49th Parallel" "Year over year there has been a dramatic increase in production north of the 49th parallel, and that has extended right across the country," said Nick Gray, the production manager on a Kim Basinger film to be shot in Toronto. Gray is among a throng of Canadians reaping the benefits of nearly a decade of growth in the film production business here that has translated into 31,000 jobs created last year alone.
But in recent months the U.S. film industry has hit back, taking out ads in newspapers and lobbying to grab back its share of the film production pie. In April, a seattle-based company placed an ad in location update, an industry magazine, that blared "Canadian film making sucks." the ad complained Canada had "sucked" $900 million of U.S. filmmaking dollars to Vancouver to "educate their children and build future industry for Canada." "It's pretty emotional language," B.C. Film Commission Head Peter Mitchell remarked.
"However, people in the U.S. almost always overstate the amount of production we do in Canada. We just seem to have become the focus of people's dismay." For the record, British Columbia took in only $408 million in American filmmaking dollars. (Reuter)
His company has been supplying vehicles for film sets for nearly 17 years -- everything from police paddy wagons to ambulances. While Hollywood fumes, producers are flocking north of the border, reeled in by the allure of a low Canadian dollar, skilled technicians and the chameleon-like Canadian landscape that can mirror virtually any U.S. setting. The numbers are still paltry by Los Angeles standards -- L.A. rakes in about c$25 billion a year from film production compared to c$1 billion generated from U.S. productions in Canada. But, image being everything when it comes to films, Canada appears to have an embarrassment of riches.
Over the past eight years film and television production activity in Canada leaped an astonishing 400 percent, thanks in no small part to American filmmaking, according to the Canadian Film and Television Production Association, a nonprofit trade group representing 300 producers. Group Works Hard to Bring Hollywood to Canada "Frankly the (association) works very hard to make sure (Hollywood) films and productions do come to Canada," spokeswoman Sylvie Powell said.
Every Canadian province now provides tax credits to the film industry, led by an aggressive federal government bent on enticing foreign filmmakers to Canada by offering production services tax credits on top of provincial goodies. While the British and French have eagerly accepted the handouts, the lion's share of foreign production has come from the United States. Hollywood has taken the bait, filming across Canada from Halifax, Nova Scotia -- a regular stand-in for maine -- to Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto, which actor Peter Ustinov once described as "New York run by the Swiss." Recent films made in Canada include "Pushing Tin" with Billy Bob Thornton and John Cusack, Maya Angelou's "Down in the Delta," on location in Nova Scotia, and "Seven Years in Tibet," which spent several weeks filming in British Columbia. Kleinburg, a sleepy town 50 minutes outside Toronto, is home to the White House, with two feature films, the Wesley Snipes Thriller "Murder at 1600" and "Dick," both using the Oval Office set up in a sound stage.
Even Canada's arctic region is getting in on the act with the launch of tax incentive programs in 1998. The Yukon has a travel rebate plus the usual labour ones, and they extend to commercials as well as films. "Dramatic Increase North of 49th Parallel" "Year over year there has been a dramatic increase in production north of the 49th parallel, and that has extended right across the country," said Nick Gray, the production manager on a Kim Basinger film to be shot in Toronto. Gray is among a throng of Canadians reaping the benefits of nearly a decade of growth in the film production business here that has translated into 31,000 jobs created last year alone.
But in recent months the U.S. film industry has hit back, taking out ads in newspapers and lobbying to grab back its share of the film production pie. In April, a seattle-based company placed an ad in location update, an industry magazine, that blared "Canadian film making sucks." the ad complained Canada had "sucked" $900 million of U.S. filmmaking dollars to Vancouver to "educate their children and build future industry for Canada." "It's pretty emotional language," B.C. Film Commission Head Peter Mitchell remarked.
"However, people in the U.S. almost always overstate the amount of production we do in Canada. We just seem to have become the focus of people's dismay." For the record, British Columbia took in only $408 million in American filmmaking dollars. (Reuter)