Michael Geist is wrong about the NS film credit

University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist is Canada’s best-informed commentator on communications and technology law, but in his Toronto Star column yesterday, he stepped outside this field to opine on Nova Scotia’s Film Tax Credit fiasco.

Citing an unreleased Ministry of Finance study that delivered, “a sharply negative verdict” on Ontario’s film tax credit, Geist argued Nova Scotia is doing the right thing by scuppering its credit—a move that will gut filmmaking in our province.

Geist is a brilliant guy, and his surveillance of internet law does the country a great service. But he’s been snookered on this issue.

Discovering that finance bureaucrats oppose film tax credits is like discovering codfish oppose factory freezer trawlers. These credits cost far more than they produce in direct corporate income taxes, so they are natural targets for beancounters who spend their careers fighting off demands on the public purse.

Geist didn’t actually see the “study” he cites; he saw a slide deck bureaucrats prepared in an apparently unsuccessful attempt to persuade the Ontario cabinet to ditch its credit. I wouldn’t call it a study, so much as an all-out screed against the program.

The slide deck makes a few points that are obvious to everyone. Film production in Canada goes up when our dollar is low—as do automobile, lumber, and canola production. Much film employment is project-based, and therefore temporary—as is employment in construction, consulting, and the entire arts sector.

Of course the deck highlights what everyone acknowledges: that only a small portion of the money paid out under the credit is recouped in direct corporate income taxes paid by the recipient companies.