Brokeback Government Goes Unforgiven
March 4th, 2010
Alberta’s award-winning film and television professionals claim that Premier Ed Stelmach’s Progressive Conservative government is driving production out of the province with policies that force big Hollywood films, as well as home-grown projects, to shoot in competing jurisdictions like B.C., New Mexico, Ontario and Manitoba.
It’s a bitter blow for an industry that has earned 46 Academy Award nominations since 1948. Alberta’s majestic scenery and first-class filmmakers have contributed to four Oscar wins: Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain in 2005, 1994’s Legends of the Fall, Clint Eastwood’s 1992 classic Unforgiven and Terrence Malick’s 1978 masterpiece, Days of Heaven.
“One after the other, we’ve lost five big Westerns in just the past few months,” says John Scott, known from Hollywood to Bollywood and beyond as one of the cinema’s foremost wranglers and stunt coordinators. “Some of those pictures have budgets of $100 million or more. Just one or two of ‘em would have brought our industry back to life.”
Scott and more than 250 motion picture union members gathered this week at Calgary’s Blackfoot Inn to discuss the crisis confronting the province’s 2,800 cast, crew and production personnel, and 600 related businesses.
They lament the premier’s recent 15% cut of Alberta’s film development program, and his government’s refusal to consider matching incentives offered to movie producers by other provinces and states. New Mexico, B.C. and Ontario offer filmmakers roughly twice the contribution to production costs available in Alberta.
So it goes with another component of the once-invincible Alberta Advantage. But here’s the real headline: it didn’t have to be this way.
As one of the premier’s candidates in the 2008 provincial election, I was shown evidence of the film and TV production industry’s perilous state by Alberta’s leading producers, artists and technicians. I presented that evidence personally to Premier Stelmach, and tried to impress upon him one fact above all.
Stimulating the film industry is not about giving taxpayer dollars away, it’s a way to guarantee future government revenue. It makes money. It’s not a giveaway.
I explained to him that his own government estimates that every production dollar attracted to the province balloons to $10.80 as it changes hands and spurs the economy forward like a racehorse exploding from the gate.
The math gets even better as more projects bring in bigger budgets. Even if the province were to double its $5 million limit on credits paid back to an individual mega-picture, the multiplier on $100 million of new money entering Alberta’s economy would eclipse the investment with net benefits, and ultimately greater revenue for the province’s coffers.
“It’s like a garden already flowering,” I told the premier. “All you have to do is add water.”
Ed promised to address the matter prior to the election, the same assurance he gave our campaign team on his ill-fated oil and gas royalty review. When he failed to follow through on that promise, I emailed his chief of staff, Ron Glen, on February 2nd, 2008.
“As I mentioned to the Premier last week,” I wrote, “we’re about to see more than $50 million worth of television and film production either leave the province for other jurisdictions, or fold. This is a huge concern for Calgary Currie and the city in general - production is a large and very high-profile employer here.
“Will an attempt be made to resolve the outstanding issues with the Alberta Film Advisory Council? If not, what alternate approach does the government suggest?”
The response from the premier’s office said everything about the government’s inability to listen to Albertans, or to grasp complex policy matters. Glen wrote that the PC caucus had decided not to adjust spending for any department.
He stated: “It would be bad politics to override this policy for one industry while we have health authorities claiming to have operating deficits.”
So there it was, in black and white: the premier and his people believe that industry incentives are no different from hospital budgets. It’s completely beyond them that health care is a vital public service expenditure, while incentives create the future revenue streams needed for just that kind of spending.
By email and phone, I tried to persuade the premier and his people to reconsider. Their response was rebuke and retribution, the same answer they gave to this candidate’s appeals over the royalty matter.
(Please see Canwest Witnesses Go Under Oath, below, as well as our first posting from October 20 2008, Challenging Defamation and Political Vandalism. We’ll soon be updating this website about a separate lawsuit filed in November of last year, as reported by the Calgary Sun on November 29 2009, against Kristine Robidoux Q.C. and “Does 1 – 10”.
The Statement of Claim states that the John Does are all believed to be “senior members of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta.”)
As for Alberta’s film and TV production community, the outlook is grim. The premier’s culture minister declined an invitation to attend this week’s Calgary meeting, then publicly derided the unions for revealing to reporters that he’d been a no-show.
Meanwhile production in Toronto and Winnipeg is booming, with producers in those cities actively pursuing Alberta’s film technicians, hoping to lure our talented crews eastward.
The offers are hard to turn down. Industry leaders like Janice Blackie-Goodine, an Oscar nominee for her set decoration in Unforgiven, reports that she did not log a single day working in film in 2009. She says that her producer on that film, David Valdes (Jesse James, Open Range) has told her that he can no longer bring productions to Alberta with incentive packages so much more attractive elsewhere.
Saddest of all, the man who put that statuesque grey under Clint Eastwood for Unforgiven has decided he’s got to put 50 of his precious saddle horses on the market.
“They gotta eat,” John Scott says, “and we need movies to feed ‘em.”
Don’t we all need movies in Alberta – along with energy, technology, agriculture and all the rest. If only we had a government that understood the links between business and revenue…