Jan 17, 2025
TIABC Voice of Tourism Newsletter – January 17, 2025
TIABC
A teammate on my hockey club is a camera operator in the movie business. His special skill is hanging out of a helicopter to film action scenes, which he’s done all over the world for countless major films. Although he’s based in the United States, he maintains a residence in BC to retain his Canadian roots and for the many occasions when he works on a flick in his home province.
As you know, British Columbia is renowned as Hollywood North with Metro Vancouver as the third largest production centre in North America. Creative BC, the independent agency launched and supported by the Province to sustain and help grow BC’s creative industries, notes the advantages of our film sector are many: cutting-edge infrastructure; competitive and dependable tax incentives; dynamic, experienced cast and crew; on-time, on-budget advantage and production services accessibly centralized within the BC Film Commission (BCFC); and all just a three-hour flight from Los Angeles.
Aside from the BCFC, there are eight provincially-funded regional film commissions (RFC) that collaborate to promote, serve and assist their regions through local knowledge, industry expertise and ground support to various productions. These local commissions are catalysts in driving jobs and economic activity, especially within the tourism sector. In fact, two of the RFCs are housed within regional destination management organizations (RDMO) who clearly recognize the synergistic relationship between productions and the visitor economy. Many community DMOs play a role as well and will share their new strategy in a workshop at the upcoming BC Tourism Industry Conference.
Aside from what’s known as film tourism, where fans of television series or movies travel to locations within destinations where these productions are shot, the broader film industry also drives significant business to hotels, restaurants, transportation providers, venues, suppliers and other tourism sub-sectors.
Given the constant threat of competition from other jurisdictions, BC’s $2.7 billion film industry – and by extension the tourism sector – is regularly obliged to find ways to retain and/or attract new productions to stage and sound studios, as well as communities throughout the province.
To that end, one of the first orders of business upon his appointment as Minister of Tourism, Arts, Culture & Sport (with responsibility for film), Hon. Spencer Chandra Herbert joined a delegation, that included tourism representatives, to visit the heads of motion picture companies in Hollywood to tout BC’s advantages and promise new film-based tax incentives.
For Budget 2025, the Province will include increases to the Film Incentive BC (FIBC) tax credit (which supports Canadian-content productions) and the production services tax credit (PSTC) that provides an incentive for international projects made in BC. It’s a positive step to be sure given how the industry was gutted by a long strike in 2023, which also impacted tourism.
At the same time, I’m convinced that additional support must also be considered for the regional film commissions that operate on a shoestring budget derived from multiple sources such as a modest grant by the ministry split between five RFCs.
By way of background, we’ve been down this road before. In fact, thanks to lobbying efforts by TIABC, BCHA and others, government doubled the annual stipend in Spring 2023, albeit for only one year. They also initiated a review of the entire RFC structure to assess funding needs and determine an equitable and sustainable funding model going forward.
To date the results of the review have not been widely shared but it appears the highly successful RFC operating and funding system is at risk. And because of the implications on tourism, TIABC and BCHA are once again involved to advocate for sufficient and secure funding to keep the RFCs whole.
The new mandate letter received by Minister Chandra Herbert yesterday references a Parliamentary Secretary for Arts, Culture and Film whose focus is to identify opportunities for BC to enhance and grow the film sector (along with arts & culture) to ensure its long-term prosperity. I suggest we start by implementing a stable funding system for regional film commissions, especially considering how little incremental funding is actually needed to generate a sizable return on investment for tourism and other sectors.
My teammate misses a lot of games, mostly because he’s off in some exotic place hanging from a chopper to shoot another action scene for a blockbuster movie. A recent chat in the dressing room after a game convinced me that decades on the road have taken its toll and this talented camera operator and occasional defenceman would rather be working closer to home and play hockey more often to help our squad win a game or two. Lord knows we need him as much as the film sector does.
Walt Judas
CEO, TIABC