Cut! These credits have rolled long enough

The comedian Robert Klein does a great bit about the New York actors’ strike of 1959, apparently a real event. The meetings of the union local, he says, were like nothing on earth. “Guys who hadn’t worked in two years were up there giving the performances of their lives. ‘Brothers and sisters! Who will stand with me …’” So there’s an example of people in “the industry” practicing their art in the guise of pursuing their commercial interests. Usually it’s the other way around, and nowhere more so than in this country, where you have only to say the words “I have a couple of scripts in development” to have three levels of government lining up to fill your pockets. Lately the game has changed: not only is it possible for a canny producer to cadge money from all three -- federal, provincial and municipal -- at the same time, but with a little ingenuity and a lot of whining you can dupe any number of provincial governments into bidding against each other. The big three, Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia, had until now offered broadly similar “incentives” to footloose producers scouting film locations, providing tax credits of 20% of the cost of labour on domestic productions, and 11% for their foreign counterparts. (This is a little industry in-joke. “Domestic” and “foreign” are terms of sublime meaninglessness: a film can be almost completely foreign in personnel, financing, and subject matter, yet qualify as domestic for the oblique purposes of Canadian content -- and vice versa. But that’s another story, on which I’m currently negotiating the film rights ...) But then the Canadian dollar, which had made Hollywood North so attractive to American producers, started its rapid ascent to the 80-cent level, and just as rapidly the Ontario film industry began warning of the dire consequences for the country’s always-fragile identity if the makers of Flesh Cruise III (“the captain goes down with the ship”) and A Bullet for Your Thoughts were to decamp for south of the border. Or, even worse, for B.C. So late last year the Ontario government, egged on by the “Conservative” opposition, jacked up the credits, to 30% domestic, 18% foreign. Quebec soon followed, raising the credit on foreign productions to 20%. And, sure enough, the B.C. film lobby is now howling for the province to do likewise, with the help of daily media reports on the latest production company threatening to pull up stakes if their demands are not met. To date, the government has resisted, but with an election in the offing it can only be a matter of time. At which point it will be Ontario’s cue to start the bidding on the second round. Just how insane is this? Let me count the ways. To the pointless zero-sum game of three provinces throwing vast amounts of money at foreign producers, only to battle each other to a draw -- the same result could have been achieved at much less expense if everyone had simply dropped their tax credits to zero -- add the typically inert federal response. This sort of ruinous interprovincial protectionism is exactly the sort of thing the federal government was called into existence to prevent. Yet for decades it has failed to do so, preferring to leave matters to the provinces to negotiate amongst themselves. Of course, the zero-sum game isn’t only between the provinces. The whole business of subsidizing one industry over another (and it is a subsidy, even if it pleases the industry to accept it in the form of a tax credit) is the same, not least because it seems virtually every industry in this country is in receipt of some sort of subsidy. The taxes paid by corporations in the film business will in part go to subsidize the aerospace industry; the aerospace industry’s taxes help to subsidize the auto industry; the auto industry pays to subsidize the film business. Everyone pays higher taxes so that everyone can claim a tax credit; Peter is robbed to pay Paul to pay Peter. Well, no, it’s not as simple as that, is it? Some of the money leaks out of this circle of inanity to the benefit of the Association for the Promotion of Peter, The Concerned Friends of Paul, the Brotherhood of Peter and Paul Employees (Local 249), and of course the many devoted public servants in the employ of the Department of Peter and Paul (not to be confused with the Department of Paul and Peter) at all levels of government. It is merely the broader public interest that loses. The industry, of course, is fond of trotting out the usual bogus numbers on “spinoff benefits” and “multiplier effects” to justify its plunder, in the same way as every other industry (perhaps in the realization that the public no long buys that old guff about “telling ourselves our own stories,” or the even hoarier “art is above mere commerce,” with its unsettling questions about why, if that’s the case, artists are not above accepting payment for their work.) To which I respond with my usual crushing rebuttal: If you dropped a billion dollars in cash at the corner of Yonge and Bloor, it would have the same multiplier effects. Every industry is a spinoff of every other industry. It’s just that some have better press agents than others.