It wasn't all that long ago Saskatchewan was stagnating.
Hordes of young people were forced to leave the province to pursue work in their desired fields. I can speak of this from personal experience, because I was one of them.
But a few years ago things started to change. The free-enterprisers threw the socialists out, and pledged a clean break from the old way of doing things.
This ushered in what they called a New Saskatchewan, where government would get out of the way and allow prosperity to reign supreme. This would be a place that would open its doors to business and repatriate workers back home from Alberta, British Columbia and elsewhere. We had what the world wants and what the world needs, they said. And we believed it.
Things really did turn around. People started coming back to the best economy in the country. Things were so good that we were noticed by CNN and the New York Times, who wrote glowing articles about how great Saskatchewan was doing.
Now we've been noticed again, this time by the prestigious film-industry publication the Hollywood Reporter.
Here's a headline they ran. "Frugal Saskatchewan to Phase Out Tax Credit."
Frugal? The headline makes it sound like Saskatchewan is cash-strapped. Isn't Saskatchewan supposed to be prosperous?
Here's another. "Film Tax Credit Cut Raises Alarm Bells in Saskatchewan." Here they quoted ACTRA's Mike Burns as saying "there's no jurisdiction that doesn't have a film tax credit. So why would producers want to come here?"
There's a third article. "Wes Bentley, Kim Coates Urge Saskatchewan to Keep Tax Credit."
Finally, they ran a fourth. "Saskatechewan Tax Credit Extended Following Industry Outcry."
You read it right. "Saskatechewan."
The point to all this is to show Saskatchewan took a big step backward when it announced it was killing the Film Employment Tax Credit.
In one fell swoop, the move decimated our local creative industries, threw away our image as a jurisdiction on the move and wiped out a decade-long effort by some of our most creative residents to turn around the reputation Saskatchewan had long held in the rest of Canada of being a cultural wasteland.
Here's the reality. You may not like tax credits, they may be a drain on the treasury, but if you don't have them, film production will leave for places that do, like Ontario, British Columbia, Louisiana, central Europe or elsewhere.
Without incentives, it's death to the production. It's difficult enough for producers or studios to cobble up financing from all the funding sources in this economy to begin with. Without a tax credit they won't have enough financing to cover the considerable risk.
The government has been employing their usual strategy of demonizing the opposition, portraying the film industry as non-residents taking advantage of local handouts. Premier Brad Wall was quoted on the radio trashing the film tax credit program as "grants" being exploited by folks who would set up temporary companies here and then leave when the production is over.
If the province was unhappy with the way the tax credit was run, they could have restructured it and put in incentives for companies to set up here more permanently.
Instead, they are tossing the whole tax credit program in the trash and throwing all the local people in the film industry under the bus, with no prior consultation and no clear proposals on what to replace it with.
By ending the film tax credit, something a vast majority of North American states and provinces have, movie and TV movers and shakers are left with one impression: that we don't get it. We look like the Not Ready for Prime Time Province.
Particularly troubling is the impression sent to this industry that Saskatchewan is not open for business. This runs counter to the "open for business" message we've spread internationally to potash, oil and nuclear power operators, and others.
We have competitive royalties for the resource sector to attract investment away from Alberta. So why are we refusing to be competitive in film? Why allow Manitoba a free pass to steal our workers?
This province is starting to go down a dangerous path of picking and choosing the industries, and the people, it wants to provide the "Saskatchewan Advantage" to. It seems film people aren't among them.
The point missed in all the debate going on is this: while the film tax credit did cost money, that $8 million a year was a worthwhile investment that moved our province forward in ways we desperately needed.
Not only did incredible publicity from productions like Corner Gas and Little Mosque on the Prairie put Saskatchewan on the map, but it was diversifying our economy and boosting industries way beyond film production, such as the hospitality sector. They're going to end up real losers in the end.
The productions also helped grow the province by creating a buzz about Saskatchewan, making it a place people actually wanted to visit or move to.
All that work done by our film industry to make our province cool instead of hick, relevant instead of boondock, and exciting instead of boring, is going to waste.
Most troubling is the message sent to young people who dream of careers in the movie industry. The message they are getting, not just from the Saskatchewan government but from many of its residents, is that in order to stay here they should forget their dreams and settle for these other jobs available.
That is exactly the attitude that caused the brain drain out of this province in the first place and created the economic muck Saskatchewan only recently dug itself out of.
