Lights, camera, action: protect film and TV now, critic urges UCP

Alberta needs to stand up to Donald Trump and protect an industry worth billions of bucks to its communities and overall economy, the NDP’s arts and culture critic told the legislature this week.

Joe Ceci pointed out that premiers in Ontario and B.C. took to their microphones in response to Trump’s early May announcement of a 100 per cent tariff on foreign film productions.

Alberta’s premier should have done the same, he said, characterizing Danielle Smith’s response as “crickets.”

But Tanya Fir of the UCP said she’s seen no indication that the industry is shrinking. Filmmakers from the U. S. continue to come to Alberta to make use of world-class talent and filmmakers, the scenery and the province’s incentives, said Fir, the minister of arts and culture.

“Alberta’s film and television industry is booming and continues to boom,” she said.

In a May 4 Truth Social post, Trump claimed he’d directed staff to "immediately begin the process" of imposing the tariff. But so far he’s provided little detail and the tariff has not been levied.

Pundits, economists and industry representatives have noted that a movie or TV show isn’t a single thing that crosses the border on the back of a flatbed. Hollywood, Canada and other countries are so entwined in movie and TV production that defining “foreign” and exactly what would be taxed is impractical at best.

Matt Jones, the minister for jobs, economy and trade, said there’s nothing for the province to react to. “The members opposite are trying to sow fear,” he said. “They’re trying to scare an industry, and if they aren’t, can they please tell me what the changes are? What are the tariffs that have been introduced by the U.S. on film?”

Jones said Alberta’s Film and Television Tax Credit has supported more than 200 productions in the past several years, creating 14,000 jobs and pumping $1.5 billion into the economy. The Alberta government’s most recent budget earmarks $235 million over three years under the program, which incentivizes projects with a total production spend of at least $500,000.

Tax credits like the ones Alberta offers appear to be part of what Trump sees as a threat to Hollywood. He posted that countries use incentives to draw filmmakers and studios out of the U.S.

Ceci called the new Trump tariff “an economic gut punch” to the Alberta screen industry that would make distribution of its output impossible. His counterpart has “offered no plan, no strategy, even though she knows this will crush the industry here.”

But Jones said:  “Of course we’ve heard rhetoric from the U.S. administration on potential tariffs. We’ve seen those not come on, come on, come off, be delayed.” But the government won’t respond to things that don’t exist, he said.

 “Maybe that’s how the members opposite would govern,” Jones continued. “We are going to deal with what comes in front of us.”

For decades now, Alberta has been a hotspot for making movies and TV shows. The countryside, cities, towns and tourist destinations of Alberta routinely stand in for U.S. locales.

An oft-cited recent example is The Last of Us, whose Season 1 collection of post-apocalypse survivors scampered, stumbled, stabbed and shot their way all over the Alberta map. Filming locations included Fort Macleod, High River, Bragg Creek, Okotoks, Waterton Lakes National Park, Olds, Stoney Nakoda Nations, Priddis, Canmore, Calgary, Edmonton and Grande Prairie.

But the use of Alberta to tell movie and TV stories goes back further than that.

Released a decade go, Interstellar, a dystopian spacetime-warper starring Anne Hathaway and Matthew McConaughey, included shoots in Fort Macleod, Nanton, Longview, Lethbridge and Okotoks.

Way back in the early 1990s, Clint Eastwood used Alberta’s Longview area to stand in for Wyoming in his seminal, Oscar-winning western The Unforgiven. And the historical western Legends of the Fall relied heavily on Alberta and B.C. locations.

Toronto and Vancouver are the two major players in Canada’s film industry, largely because they often stand in for big American cities. The Toronto International Film Festival, established in 1976, is one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals.

It all adds up to the country earning the nickname Hollywood North, a monicker Trump would apparently like to see land on the cutting room floor.