Andy Nichols

Alan McCullogh (l) and George Tarrant say Alberta's uncompetitive incentives are choking the film and TV industry.

Alberta producers and the province are strangling the film and television industry’s competitive edge by backing restrictive funding subsidy rules, say several unions and guilds.

An Alberta government funding program designed to attract homegrown film and television productions is styming foreign investment in favour of local producers, the unions claim. For example, a local film or television company can receive as much as 29 per cent of its budget up to a maximum of $5 million per program, whereby a U.S. company can get up to 22 per cent — and unions believe the playing field should be levelled, as the discriminatory funding scares away foreign investment and is nowhere near the generous incentives offered to foreign investors in B.C., Ontario and Quebec.

“The whole thing is frustrating,” says Damian Petti, chair of the Alberta Association of Motion Picture and Television Unions (AAMPTU), which includes actors, set designers and cameramen. “We’ve jumped through all the hoops, attended all the meetings, worked on business cases, made submissions, and it seems as though there’s not a willingness to allow our industry to thrive.”

Alberta producers, on the other hand, like the funding structure, as they can financially benefit the most and are usually guaranteed a job on a foreign film or TV program shot in Alberta. The president of the Alberta Motion Picture Industries Association (AMPIA), a “producer-centric” group with 200 members, says the subsidies were originally set up to support Alberta projects and companies. “It was meant to build Alberta companies and Alberta-based projects through wholly-owned and co-productions,” Tom Cox says.

But Petti points out that because of this system, foreign film and TV producers shun Alberta and work in more generous provinces. “That’s a deal breaker for all the big studios,” says Petti. “The studios repeatedly tell us… ‘No other province in Canada does this and it’s ludicrous to expect us to accept it.’”

Many Alberta film and TV unions and guilds want the province to rewrite its subsidy rules to attract more foreign business and put all players on more fair, equal footing, whether they’re local or foreign producers, says Robin Chetwynd, business agent of the Directors Guild of Canada, an umbrella group of film and TV unions and guilds. Alberta producers, he says, are fighting this change because “it’s going to potentially erode their business and their position.”

Last year Ontario and Quebec boosted their tax credit allowance for foreign films and TV productions to 25 per cent of their overall budgets. The Ontario Media Development Corporation reported a 41 per cent increase in local and foreign production for 2009, compared to the previous year.

Competing with B.C. and Ontario — whose “aggressive” funding programs dwarf Alberta’s $17-million fund by 1,000 per cent — isn’t realistic, says Alberta Culture Minister Lindsay Blackett. Ontario is desperate because of the downturn in its manufacturing sector and the industry plays a huge role in B.C.’s economy, he says. “It’s not as big a part of our economy as we’re dominated by oil wealth.”

Unions and guilds point out that the Alberta government recently cut the Alberta Film Development Program’s budget by 15 per cent, to $17 million — which they claim is like throwing grease on a fire.

Chetwyn says Blackett has turned a blind eye to AAMPTU’s concerns and solutions. “AAMPTU doesn’t expect its position is going to be wholly accepted, but we have to have some legitimate, reasonable dialogue and so far it’s a one-sided story with the government listening only to AMPIA,” Chetwyn says of the producers’ association.

The Alberta Film Development Program was created in 1998 as a $15-million, three-year pilot project with a mandate to develop a “strong Alberta production industry” able to compete “within the national and international marketplace.” In 2001, it had an annual budget of $10 million. In 2008, its per-project funding cap increased from $1.5 million to $5 million.

One solution, says Cox, is creating two separate industries — one Albertan, another foreign — but there is no government appetite for that approach. “There’s some political realities that we face in terms of working within a resource-based economy,” he says. “We have not made sufficient inroads, even philosophically within the government, and I’m not sure we would with the voting population either to see the kind of open-ended incentives that exist in B.C and Ontario.”

Many in the industry have criticized AMPIA (producers) for not wanting to bite the hand that feeds it. “I don’t know how they can claim to be objective when part of their annual operating fees are paid for by the Alberta government,” says Chetwynd. “Quite frankly, they’re a shill for the government.”

The current incentive structure pits groups against each other when they should be working together, says Petti, AAMPTU’s chair. “In other provinces you have streamlined incentives where you don’t pit one group against another,” he says. “The sad thing is that we have trained hundreds of people to work in the Alberta industry and many of them have ended up in British Columbia, Ontario and Manitoba — jurisdictions that are competitive.”

Alan McCullogh and George Tarrant have worked a combined 44 years in the film industry. For now, the set director and sound location mixer are based in Alberta, but they have been unemployed for the past three months and there are no prospects.

“There’s been a substantial drop in the quantity of work — it’s pretty grim,” says McCullogh. He hopes to ride things out, but “the reality is if I want to continue working in this industry I’ll have to move in the next month or two,” he says. “We have offers in other provinces, so the opportunity to work exists elsewhere.”

Tarrant is looking for work elsewhere. “A guy has to put food on the table,” he says. He compares the situation with the film industry to that of the province’s oil and gas sector — both are incentive based, he says. “If you don’t have the incentives, people don’t come, as we just witnessed with the oil companies,” he says. “If the incentives aren’t there the people are going to spend their money where they are, and right now that’s not Alberta. It’s a sad truth.”

The mudslinging within the industry only damages its reputation and deters investors, says Blackett. “They don’t help themselves when they just start bashing government,” he says. “It’s a lot easier to ask for money when my colleagues see an industry that is going to work collectively for the betterment of Alberta. They’re not going to be supportive if they’re sitting there taking shots at us.”