Canadian Heritage committee  In Vancouver it's extremely important to have those components to attract productions. It differentiates us from other jurisdictions. We have the top post-production, visual effects, and animation companies in the world locating in Vancouver. That's going to help attract physical

Canadian Heritage committee  I think it's a priority for us. When we sit around the table with our industry association, all the heads of labour sit around that table as well. We work very closely with them in terms of making our jurisdiction as attractive as we can. There are other things we do which I thi

Canadian Heritage committee  The grind and Telefilm.

Canadian Heritage committee  On behalf of the Motion Picture Production Industry Association, it would be unanimous.

Canadian Heritage committee  Why don't I start on that one. First of all, if we have more competitive financing opportunities, we're going to attract more production here. When we attract more production, we're attracting the top companies in the world that are at the forefront of the changing technology, c

Canadian Heritage committee  The grind is a reduction of the tax credit base by the provincial credits, prior to calculating the federal credit. In other words, if they just calculated the federal credit on the base itself without deducting the other incentives from the provinces, that would make a significa

Canadian Heritage committee  I think we work very closely together. In terms of tax policy, I think you really have to study it and make sure there are benefits to both the industry and the government. I'm not advocating a wholesale change, and I think there's a risk of doing that, because we're dealing with

Canadian Heritage committee  Well, it's changing all around, but look at the quality of the games now, at how realistic they are, and the animation components and the real-life types of components. My nephew from Waterloo is now working at Microsoft here in Vancouver. He's certainly talented enough in terms

Canadian Heritage committee  We have been working closely with the Conservative government, and they have made some changes to facilitate people getting into the country. There are a couple of issues that we're concerned about. One is the four-and-four rule. After four years, they have to leave for four ye

Canadian Heritage committee  I'll comment on the tax credits. What we've asked for federally is not actually to increase the tax credits; we've just asked you to eliminate the grind. First of all, it's inconsistent in the amount of federal tax credits we get from province to province, which doesn't make se

Canadian Heritage committee  In British Columbia the spend on film and television in the community was over $1 billion, and it's been that way for a number of years now. When I was vice-president and controller with Cannell Films, I'd have a stack of cheques. We paid over 5,000 different vendors. I look at

Canadian Heritage committee  I think that's a fantastic comment in terms of where we could do better, working closely with Tourism British Columbia. It's certainly one of the initiatives we have for our industry association this year. They do that very well in some of the American states. We need to blow o

Canadian Heritage committee  Certainly, the United States is a huge competitor, some of the states there. There's no doubt about that. In terms of Canada though, one of the things we look at, in British Columbia specifically, is that we want to get the business up here. The advantage of getting the U.S. bus

Canadian Heritage committee  There are a number of factors. Here in British Columbia, of course, the crocuses are coming up. It is 14 degrees and balmy. We can shoot year-round in B.C. I think it's the quality of talent we have right across Canada. That's why when Paul was referring to Saskatchewan...it's

Canadian Heritage committee  That's how we built the industry in Canada. We built the industry by attracting some of the top talent from the U.S. initially, and now it's from around the world. These are the people who trained the people who are working in British Columbia. As an example, Steve Beers is an