Premier Christy Clark says Vancouver has been named to host the "Times of India Film Awards".

Events will be held across Metro Vancouver April fourth to sixth.

Clark says vancouver will be centre stage for an event that will be seen by hundreds of millions of people in one of the worlds fastest growing economies.

A government release says the immediate economic benefit of hosting the film festival is in the neighborhood of 13 to 18 million dollars.

The cost of hosting the event is 12 million dollars.

While the Premier defends spending millions of tax dollars to draw more business from Bollywood to BC, she's not apologizing for saying "no" to more tax breaks for the local film industry.
 
"We want it to be about trade. Introducing British Columbia to hundreds of millions of people in India."

Christy Clark says BC's film industry already gets nearly 300-million dollars worth of tax incentives and this latest announcement has already been fruitful.

"One Bollywood production will come to BC, use BC suppliers, so at the same time that we're trying to make our province attractive from a tax perspective, we're also using events like this to try and bring more productions to our province."
 
Film industry insiders continue to insist bc is no longer competitive with other provinces, including Ontario.
Several film industry insiders are attending a town hall meeting tonight in North Vancouver to talk strategy.