Have Mercy

Little Mosque on the Prairie is absolutely dreadful. I forced myself to sit through several episodes to give it a chance, and I despised myself after watching it. I felt stupider.

Oh, and the CBC's $1 billion bailout should be canceled AS WELL AS this generous film subsidy.

And here's their online petition:

http://www.petitionhosting.com/petitions/www.savethesfetc.com

"Get real jobs. Your industry can't survive because nobody is willing to pay for it. Your companies don't pay tax in Sask. Kaiboshing this credit was a GOOD decision."

Go, my pretties! You know what to do.

I've got a better deal for the Saskatchewan government. They give me $100 million and I'll produce $80 million in benefits for them.

@Howie- $100 million in tax credits since 1998, which produced $600 million in benefits. The $75million was just for 2011

Maybe they can make a movie about 'robust tax credits' saving and creating jobs and send to Washington in time for the election.

Unionized actors pleading for lower taxes like common tea partiers, oh the shame.

I'm not sure which you're wanting us to sigh about first: is it that Little Mosque isn't actually filmed in Saskatchewan, or that it is being seriously compared with Corner Gas as "beloved and cherished"?

Let's subsidize the film industry to the tune of $13 billion.... that way, the 13 billion will turn into 130 kabillion jillion dollars worth of "economic activity!"

It's filmed in Toronto!?!?

I lived in Toronto during Rae days and when the Leafs and the Jays were winning franchises. Don't remember seeing any damn prairie there.

This smells like equalization for artists!

Am I missing something here?

So let's do the math.

The government spent 100 million in order to obtain 600 million in benefits. That means it spent 6 million to get 40 million in an average year. Interesting that ACTRA selects 2008-2009 as their model year, however, because that was the last year that Corner Gas was filmed in the province. Now, the industry generates about a third of their statistic. I also would like to see where the film industry assumes 1200 jobs out of what's essentially a part time gig in the province.

Corner Gas is the only production in the province to date which has been a commercial success. The Sound Stage in Regina was an albatross before Corner Gas, and likely has returned to that status since. There is no point in subsidizing an industry which will never exist without a subsidy. Much like the de-funding of Enterprise Saskatchewan, this was the right decision, and I'm glad Mr. Wall made it.

"$75 million worth of economic activity"

Curious how much of this actually stayed in the province.

Can someone please tell me authoritatively whether this was a tax CREDIT (excusing a tax otherwise payable) or a GRANT (government giving or lending money for a specific purpose)??

Bull - it's a refundable tax credit. In essence, they apply for the credit by filling out an extra schedule on their corporate tax return, and as long as they meet certain criteria, the "credit" is added as tax paid and the net above "tax payable" is refunded. That's the mechanics - the reality is that it's a grant as long as certain conditions are met.

After reading the ACTRA letter, I find it odd that they are using Little Mosque, which was filmed predominantly in Toronto, and Prairie Giant, which couldn't have been made without direct funding from the provincial government (they sponsored it, AND gave it the tax credit) as evidence that the credit is working. Of course, the fact that Corner Gas was filmed here had nothing to do with the fact that it's creator and producer was born and raised here.

That only one of the projects deemed as evidence that the credit is a success was ACTUALLY a success speaks volumes about the value of the credit to the film industry.

Can I get a tax credit for having to endure watching an episode of Little Mosque on the PC Prairie? About $75 per show sounds about right.

The fact is that the TV & Movie industry have been playing jurisdictions off of one another for decades. So have sports teams. So have public sector unions. I'm ecstatic that Premier Wall is finally saying "Enough" to one of them!

The way I understand it is that it was technically a tax credit. The money would be sent back after the bills were submitted.

However, some of the "tax credits" were incredibly high and included things like a labour "tax credit" that would essentially subsidize half a person's wage.

Ultimately the tax received was less than the tax credits paid out and the province was losing something like $8 million a year.

The arguement then became, that without the $8million to incentivize the productions, they simply wouldn't arrive in Saskatchewan.
Since every other province provides these incentives it creates an unlevel playing field and the productions go elsewhere, thus the province can end up losing out on tens of millions of outside investment.

The overall problem is that while it seems business friendly to offer a tax credit of any kind and unfortunately necessary to compete with other provinces, one has to ask....why do we care this much? If taxpayers have to spend a $1.00 to convince some douche from Los Angeles to spend $3.00, maybe we'd be better off focusing on not spending the $1.00 at all and just allowing more natural industries to blossom without such high levels of incentives.

The problem is two fold...

#1. Not everyone wants to work on the rigs or in Potash mines. We've always underachieved by remaining drawers of water and hewers of wood and working to blow past that is probably worth it.

#2. It's not just the film industry that's full of tax incentives for business. Pretty much every other business model for anything is going to have something. Which leads one to wonder why the hate on for the film industry? Answer?

Revenge.

Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story?!?! The NDP funded soundstage?!?! Arts groups that are almost uniformly and inheritly left wing?!?

The Saskatchewan Party is taking revenge.

The Writer is a dork. It is petty to use another province as an example.. and the "I will share a cup of Coffee" crap is the sign of a defeatist... BUT

I believe that Society MUST support the Arts. It is a window into who we are, and Sask has some stories that need to be told..

SDA is certainly better entertainment.

Would be interesting to note how much Kate's blog has contributed to the provincial economy. At no cost to the taxpayer.

Phillip, I agree the arts should be supported. I don't think the current grant and entitlement system is working.

Using Little Mosque & Corner Gas as examples just shows how pathetic Canadian productions are. Without free money they wouldn't exist. As an advertiser I would be embarrassed to have my product shown during these shows.

mike

Thank you OxygenTax. You've certainly cleared up my confusion as well as why it was so confusing in the first place. I never even considered refundable tax credits and how that would meet both criteria.

Now if only I can lobby for a refundable tax credit for my organic poppy seed farming operation, all will be good in my world.

Sure, the arts should be supported. Just not by the taxpayer. Go out and buy your favourite DVDs, CDs, whatever. Go wild!

And let's not forget that there are thousands of artistic works that weren't popular when they came out, and that most people have forgotten, but that a few people remember and love. I believe CBC Radio has a pretty good track record on this account, although frankly I have never have time to actually listen to it.

There is a myth going round that arts subsidies or other forms of handout lead to the creation of many times their amount in wealth. It's not true. It's just adding up all the spinoffs from the so-called "multiplier" (which is really nothing more than turnover of dollars). What they don't tell you is that, if the sum works out to, say, 4 times bigger for arts grants, it might be 10 times bigger for everything else.

The left always produces nebulous numbers to try to pretend that grants and tax credits to their favorite causes has a tremendous economic multiplier effect. If that were really the case, we should be swimming in money. Quite simply....they lie.

If the returns were so good, they don't need tax credits and grants because the private sector would be investing heavily.

$100,000,000 in tax credits for 1,200 jobs? (Assuming their figures are not highly exaggerated.) That's $83,333.33 per job. I don't think that the auto bailouts were even that expensive.

So it's a bargain then, compared to the Prince Albert pulp mill.

Hey how about a potato subsidy?

Yes, I know it's not fair to compare actual things, to films about actual things. ... sorry.

So it's a bargain then, compared to the Prince Albert pulp mill.

Hey how about a potato subsidy?

Yes, I know it's not fair to compare actual things, to films about actual things. ... sorry.

Next movie:

Three Stooges blow up Yemen.

-

Love that name FATIMA

reminds me of a diet pill.

Somebody has to say it.
If the productions referenced where so successful, and generated so much wealth, why do they need any money?

The Tommy Douglas Story? Who watched that? And does the already subsidized cbc get more subsidiies provincially?

So, if...

..."using Little Mosque & Corner Gas as examples just shows how pathetic Canadian productions are. Without free money they wouldn't exist..."

...and "sure, the arts should be supported. Just not by the taxpayer..."

...and "if the returns were so good, they don't need tax credits and grants because the private sector would be investing heavily..."

...then where is the SDA thread supporting, for example, Greenpeace on this? Or Obama on this?

Because using taxpayers' dollars to fund private sector initiatives is intolerable to you, right?

1200 part time jobs with a cost of $83K per job. How do I get one of those part time jobs???

Davinputz
The oil sands do something the arts have never done, run at a profit.
Those "subsidies" that you scream hypocrite about, are for developement, not sustainment.
But just for the sake of humouring you, lets ditch all the "subsidies" including the biggest one called equalization, and the other supply management controls that inflate the price of milk and eggs.
Of course the arts would never have developed to where it is today without a big wooping dollop of tax dollars, the Cistine Chapel for instance, or the Bessemer process would never see the light of day without a government bailout.

The Tommy Douglas Story - a lie riddled piece that it is, is reason enough to shut down film industry in Saskatchewan. Shown in our schools no less.

I lived in Toronto during Rae days...Don't remember seeing any damn prairie there.

Posted by: Glenn at April 9, 2012 12:57 AM

Well, what ever prairie there might have been, was pretty well a dustbowl by the time Rae finished with it.

Saskatchewan really doesn't have to further subsidize CBC to produce TV shows in Toronto that have prairie sounding names.

You guys had the NDP for a long time so perhaps you need a hand. The normal situation west of the Ottawa River is that businesses earn money and give part of it to the government. These payments are called taxes.

East of the Ottawa River, the business climate is so toxic that businesses must be paid to locate there. That is why the rest of Canada has taxes. See paragraph above for explanation of taxes.

People who made it in the film industry without government subsidy _ Louis B Mayer, John Ford, John Huston, Martin Scorsese, Stephen Spielberg, Ron Howard, Steven King, Clint Eastwood.......

The film industry is an art form only to losers, any successful producer knows that for art to be appreciated it must be shown to wide audiences and that means it must make money. They call it the "film industry" because it is first and foremost a business. If you have no business sense, your "art" will remain an idiosyncrasy. There has never been a time in history where artists who used to rely on noblesse oblige can free themselves from overbearing patronage and own their art and be wealthy - it's called the free market and demand economics.

Of course if your artistic output is crappy and you want to coast on the public dime, the competition of the free market scares the hell out of you. The welfare arts community in Canada and the big stink they make anytime their pogey is cut is a sad statement on Canadian art and culture. The quality of Canadian art is being derailed by this art weldare culture.

My case in point: "Swan Hands" the movie.

Davinport, the hypocrisy runs both ways it seems, because if it's okay to have government "invest" in film, it should also be okay to have government "invest" in oil and gas. The difference is that at some point, the oil and gas "subsidies" wear off, and all we're left with is a pump that's producing oil without a subsidy. Can the film industry say the same thing?

And for the record, most of the staunchest NDP supporters I've seen invest heavily in flow-throughs and labour sponsored funds (another heavy subsidy for Labour, no less), does that make them hypocrites too?

Davenport, this will help keep things in perspective.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/03/m-big_oil_and_tax_breaks.html

Note that this just covers tax breaks, not direct subsidies and loan guarantees (which seem to guarantee defaults).

"Swan Hands" the movie. Occam, you tarred and feathered the problem- and made me laugh out loud. Your "Swan Hands" the movie, could be a brilliant header, right here at SDA. Ceebeecee would pick it up and 'voila'! an investigative report, with Peter Handsbridge.

Good article on the part of the equation the pro-arts funding crowd never mentions:

http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/2010/08/23/15117326.html

"Wright provided the 2006 report, "The Case for Investment in the Arts."

The paper uses a multiplier and ignores the de-multiplier.

The multiplier explains a dollar spent on the arts might hire an actor, who then buys lunch. The waiter benefits and buys shoes for her child, and so on. Of course taxes are also collected. It multiplies.

What they don't do is study what would have happened if the dollar had stayed in the pocket of the taxpayer in the first place. That's the de-multiplier.

After all, the same economic benefit-chain could be done stemming from the taxpayer spending that dollar as he or she chooses, perhaps to greater community benefit.

Private economic activity responds to market demand, while politicians can reward friends in return for political support.

No estimate is made of personal bankruptcies due all or in part to usuriously high taxation, seniors on fixed incomes forced out of their homes, people laid off or never hired."

movie people, mostly idiots that wouldn't know sh*t from shingles, cut all subsidies and tax breaks till"actors" start making a decent wage, instead of those reDICKulASS numbers

I used to have dealings with the "film" industry and have no respect for any of them

Less Than Kind is pretty funny, and shows up on American TV.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Less_Than_Kind

A question for Davinport - in "Altas Shrugged" a private company developed a copper mine, put in all the infrastructure, did all the preliminary work, and then the mine was expropriated by the government. The entire mine was a fraud, and the government started screaming about how they were robbed, because there wasn't actually any copper (that is, thing of value) in the "mine". I can't recall whether there was any governmental "instesting" (tax credits, capital write-downs, etc) involved. My question for you is what goods or services are provided to international companies to warrant the taxation loads applied upon them? "The resources belong to all of us" doesn't mean anything if they are never developed and never added to the sum product of all goods available to be purchased (ie "the economy"). In the case mentioned above, the government got the benefits of the jobs and development despite their not being anything to add to the economy, is that better or worse than developments that actually produce something? Given previous history on here, I'm not expecting an answer, but would appreciate your thoughts on how government and industry do/should interact.

Oxyegentax: "Davinport, the hypocrisy runs both ways it seems, because if it's okay to have government "invest" in film, it should also be okay to have government "invest" in oil and gas."

It would only be hypocritical to support subsidies for some private sectors but not others if you espoused a political ideology and economic philosophy that opposes the use of public funds to subsidize private market activities. Last I checked, most NDP supporters -- unlike, say, a good number of folks who frequent this blog -- were not categorically opposed to such government intervention -- they're merely opposed to such intervention in certain sectors that they do not support, for one reason or another.

The question, are you someone who ideologically opposes public subsidies, full stop, or are you more like the NDP that you might care to admit?

C_Miner
"My question for you is what goods or services are provided to international companies to warrant the taxation loads applied upon them?"

As little as possible, I hope. There is no relationship between taxation and services nor should there be.

In the Alberta oilpatch, governments do not even build roads including some fairly major ones. The forestry and oil companies all make deals to use each other's roads.

They get nervous when the engine on the Gravy Train stutters.

Davenport, the main reason that SDA'ers are not up in arms about oil sands subsidies is that they are largely a figment of the left's imagination. Any references that I have followed on this topic refer to allowing the companies to deduct their costs as a "subsidy". This is not a subsidy, this is standard practice in corporate taxation, namely you tax the company on its net profit after deducting costs.
It's only when the left doesn't like the costs they are allowed to deduct (in this case mainly the cost of natural gas used) that they magically become "subsidies".

What? They didn't cite The Beachcombers as a Sask success? The mind boggles at the thought.

The left believes that anything short of 100% taxation is a subsidy. Weird people.

It's like the old joke about Dukakis in Massachusetts. How does Dukakis define "take home pay"? .... Lost revenue opportunity.

Scar - sshhhhhhhh, I stawking wabbit.... er, I mean, couch.

Is that colin mochrie commenting here?