Film industry on ‘life support’ six years after tax credit cut

Talent flees to adjoining provinces where business continues to boom

Rhonda Baker spent the Christmas holidays in Regina, visiting family. Soon, it’s back to work in the booming Manitoba film industry.

Baker moved to Winnipeg in November 2012, months after the Saskatchewan government halted local film production by ending a long-running tax credit.

“It wasn’t drying; it was over. I couldn’t bring a project to Saskatchewan,” said Baker, a producer since the 1990s.

She didn’t want to leave her hometown, but “you get up one morning and go, ‘OK, do I want to work again or not?’ ”

Jeff Beesley held out a little longer. He and his family packed up for Winnipeg in autumn 2015.

Their roots in Moose Jaw were “too deep” to pick up immediately.

But, “it just came to a point where I really wanted to be directing again and I wanted to be in the film industry again,” said Beesley, a director who earned his University of Regina film degree in 1996.

That was the year that producer Virginia Thompson brought the Incredible Story Studio series to Saskatchewan, due to Alberta scrapping its film industry incentive. Her company, Verite Films, went on to produce three other series here, most notably Corner Gas.

Saskatchewan’s film employment tax credit began in 1998 — the same year the Alberta government backpedalled its disincentive.

That province’s film industry had shrunk from $160 million to $12 million in two years.

It didn’t take long to bounce back, though. In 2000, a $5.7-million government investment attracted $68 million in film production.

“They’ve been doing gangbusters for years now. It was kind of a walkaway, and then a rebuild,” said Thompson, who moved to Toronto in 2012.

“The health of the Alberta film and television industry today, that’s a carbon copy of what could happen in Saskatchewan.”

There is no immediate sign of such a reversal, though.

“A tax credit system is not under consideration at this time,” according to a prepared statement from the Saskatchewan government’s executive council.

In February 2013, the government launched Creative Saskatchewan, offering relatively small incentives to filmmakers.

Its screen-based media production grant has a $600,000-per-project cap, funding 30 per cent of a local budget and generally benefiting productions of $2 million or less.

“In the film world, that’s teeny tiny and very difficult to sustain an industry,” said Layton Burton, a Regina-based director of photography.

“Our main issue is lack of funding,” said Lioz Bouganin, president of the Saskatchewan Media Production Industry Association (SMPIA) board of directors, and owner of Landslide Entertainment. “In order for us to employ more people …, in order for us to take advantage of the soundstage which we still have in Regina, we need to attract those bigger productions to the province.”

But Saskatchewan’s new model can’t compete with neighbouring provinces’ incentives.

In Manitoba, where film productions totalled $178.2 million last fiscal year, there is no cap on spending.

The Manitoba government invested $15.7 million last year in its two tax credits — one that reimburses production companies up to 65 per cent of salary costs, and another that reimburses 30 per cent of production spending.

To the west, Alberta’s screenbased production grant supports projects to a maximum of $7.5 million, returning 25 per cent to 30 per cent of all eligible costs.

Baker plans to retire in Saskatchewan, but is unlikely to produce a film here given current incentives.

“If there were no incentives anywhere in North America, then probably Saskatchewan would be back in the running as a potential place,” she said. The soundstage is a draw, “but there’s no crew left.”

Of the 2,000-or-so people who kick-started Saskatchewan’s film industry in the 1990s, Burton said fewer than 25 are left.

The latest person to leave is props master Jay Robertson, who relocated to B.C. a few weeks ago.

“I’d probably have to import 90 per cent of the crew,” said Baker. “That’s massive.”

That’s especially the case, said Beesley, when a production can be reimbursed a quarter of its budget in another province.

“If I can buy the exact same car at a lot across the street for $5,000 less, no matter how much you like the salesman, where are you going to buy it?” said Beesley.

A Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce report found that, over 14 years, the government invested $108.8 million in the tax credit, which created $623.4 million in economic activity. Annually, the industry accounted for 851 fulltime jobs on average.

“We are an industry that brought money, new investment, taxes, employment and kept young people at home,” said Burton.