Stop building bike lanes, moonbeam, and use that money for the film industry.

As Vancouver will bare the brunt of the job loss it seems it would behoove Gregory to forward some money to Victoria to off-set the tax loss to the Province. And the money could come from all these money making "Urban Farms" Gregory has on the table now !!

Typical Gregor, jumps on whatever trendy bandwagon comes along. Without contributing anything to an actual realisitc plan. I believe the film industry situation should be addressed, but expect more relevant input from someone in the position of mayor.

While I'mon the topic of our mayor - just how much investment in bike lanes will produce a realistic return on investment? It rains in our city abotu 8 months of the year, we will never be a mass cycling city. Maybe the funds would be better invested in more buses and skytrian cars, so that we can actually get on them in the morning & evening without standing and watching 5 or 6 go by too full to take on any more passengers? Then EVERYONE would have access to better commuting options.

This is a continuation for TAX freedom for Corporations:
“Corporate Tax Freedom Day” arises from a non-partisan belief in the panacea of corporate tax breaks. The governments of Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin and Stephen Harper steadily lowered the corporate tax rate from 28 per cent in 2000 to 15 per cent as of Jan. 1, 2012. The stated goal has been to free up corporate profits for greater economic vitality and job creation.
Misplaced enthrallment with tax breaks as a come-on to foreign investment first appealed to governing Liberals mesmerized by Ireland’s “economic miracle” of the early 2000s, arising from Dublin’s experiment with the lowest corporate tax rates in Europe. But by the end of that decade, an insolvent Ireland was among the first of the European Union members requiring a bailout from its EU partners.
This particular form of corporate welfare has come at a high cost to everyday Canadians. Corporate tax receipts reached $30 billion in fiscal 2010-11, a mere 20 per cent increase over the average of 2002-05.
The Canadian economy grew by more than 88 per cent during that period. If corporate tax revenues had increased in tandem, we’d have $17 billion in additional funds Ottawa has chosen to forsake with which to close our deficit, social justice and infrastructure gaps.
So what does Canada gain from leaving that $17 billion on the table, and for the lowest corporate tax rate among the G-7 nations? (The U.S. rate is 35 per cent.)
Our business leaders themselves continue to bemoan the laggard productivity of Canada’s private sector, which stubbornly refuses to invest in the best-trained workers and most efficient machinery. Corporate R&D spending in Canada is embarrassingly meager. And the $17-billion windfall is not being spent on job creation.
More than 1.4 million Canadians are jobless amid a supposed Canadian economic recovery, 400,000 more than pre-recession 2008. Instead, the massive tax break is being spent on CEO pay hikes, stock buybacks, higher dividend payouts, and cash hoarding.
Since Harper accelerated the corporate tax giveaways, Hershey Co. has closed its three Canadian manufacturing plants. Siemens Canada Ltd. shuttered its century-old gas-turbine plant in Hamilton. Ford Motor shut down its auto-assembly plant in St. Thomas, Ont. And last month Caterpillar Inc. ended more than a half century of locomotive manufacturing in London, Ont.
If deep-discount taxes are a magnet for foreign investment, why are Siemens and Caterpillar relocating their former Canadian operations to the comparatively high-tax regime of the U.S.? (In Charlotte, N.C. and Muncie, Ind., respectively.)
It doesn’t take a tree-full of owls to figure out why defectors are leaving. They’re engaged in a race to the bottom on wage costs, not tax levels. America is becoming the world’s newest sweatshop economy, where the likes of Caterpillar and Ikea are building plants in low-wage, non-union states and paying less than half the labour costs that apply in Canada.
A sensible industrial policy would reserve the lowest tax rates for companies that create high-skill jobs in Canada. That invest in R&D and made-in-Canada innovations. And that reduce our export reliance on the U.S. by cracking global markets elsewhere.
Instead, a $17-billion gift that has to be made up by everyday Canadians is showered indiscriminately, much of it on the likes of “Canadian” firms in our branch-plant economy that are glorified warehouse operations for their offshore parents.
As economic stimulus ideas go, it would be more effective for Ottawa to place skids of $20,000 in cash on street corners in distressed neighbourhoods. People struggling to make ends meet don’t hoard cash but promptly spend it on necessities like rent, food and children’s clothing. And not having private jets and executive dining rooms to write off as a business expense, such folks among us actually pose less of a financial burden on society than a great many CEOs.

Ken280: 49% plus! You actually did some research work!

To BC taxpayers: The $285 million film and TV tax incentive is a REBATE not a subsidy. Until two years ago, about $1.2 billion in revenue was generated annually which meant the industry injected almost $1 billion into the provincial economy every year. Because the current Government has refused to remain competitive with other provinces, most productions no longer shoot in BC which has slashed revenue to PRACTICALLY NOTHING and created massive unemployment. Understand that BC taxpayers are NOT SAVING $285 million. You are in reality LOSING the nearly billion dollars of taxable revenue that was invested in the local economy every single year.
•Supports 25,000+ quality jobs – well paying knowledge based, equity employment;
•The production industry contributed on average 1.1 billion dollars in production spending annually for the past decade – that is new money – to the BC economy over the past decade, not including ancillary spending and economic spin off to regional and municipal governments and to other sectors such as hospitality/tourism, and the multitude of small to medium-sized businesses that supply motion picture production in BC;
•The total contribution to the BC economy since the incentive program started is $14.3 billion;


•The total investment (tax credit) from the BC Government since the incentive program started is $1.5 billion, approximately 10%;


•According to the Income Taxation Branch the highest tax credit paid out to date 2011-2012 was $219 million;


•Over 1 billion dollars of private investment in industry infrastructure;
•24 post secondary institutions offering internationally recognized industry education & training for the next generation of production professionals;
•Cornerstone of BC’s creative economy worth a combined $4 billion GDP (making it the fifth largest sectors in the province), representing 85,000 jobs (making it the second largest industrialized sector)*;


•The creative economy is growing at a faster rate than the economy as a whole*;


•Green conscious industry sector with a light footprint on the environment;


•Has created a high profile for British Columbia worldwide, widely benefitting the hospitality and tourism sector;


•BC’s production community is generous and supportive of local arts, education, youth and social causes. Examples: MPPIA annual giving to the Vancouver Food Bank, $10,000+ a year since 2007; more than 20 years of routine and holiday season outreach from across the industry on the downtown eastside; Habitat for Humanity; A Loving Spoonful, AIDS Vancouver to name only a few.

All of us in the film industry are tax payers and have family and payments ...
please help us all,and support SaveBCFilm

Ken280: The readers consultant, a man with a briefcase 50 miles away from home.
Just a reminder Ken, if you keep doing research before barking like you did today, you can avoid ever having to go to LION'S GATE HOSPITAL over NDP created health issues.

Now only if your buddies, TAXED TO DEATH AND BCTAXPAYER start doing research, the readers won't have to call you the 3 stooges like that of Glen Clark, Dan Miller, and Ujjal Dosanjh.

Keep up the good work Ken, but a lot of work needed to get that 49% plus.

Okay, here's my action Moonbeam. Come to Surrey. Bye bye Vancouver!

To clarify, the tax incentive program is not a subsidy paid for by the taxpayers. The government does not give money to production companies to operate.

It is a 33-per-cent labour only tax incentive. At the conclusion of business, a production company adds up the taxes taken off the employees that have worked on the production that are B.C. residents (who must provide identification to verify they are indeed B.C. residents), and claims that to the provincial government. The provincial government then gives 33 per cent of those taxes back to the production company.

To be clear, this is a tax incentive program for production companies to hire B.C. residents. So essentially, it is we in the film industry who pay for the tax incentive program with cooperation from the provincial government.

What we are lobbying for the government to do is reassess the tax incentive program to make it more competitive with Ontario and Quebec, which raised their tax incentive programs a few years ago to a 25-per-cent coverall tax incentive.

By doing so, any action the B.C. provincial government takes will come at no cost to the taxpayer. It just means the government will be giving back a little more to the production companies, but keeping thousands of film industry workers off Employment Insurance, and having 30-40 per cent of their paycheques taxed again....And bringing in over $1 billion anually into our BC economy..
I'm proud to be part of a green industry that employs over 25,000 directly in the film indusrty and so many more 1,000's in spin off business and companies that supply the film industry..
We dont want a "hand out" we just want an even ,or close to even playing field with Ontario and Quebec,,,
We just want productions to come back to BC so we can all go back to work

Please watch

http://youtu.be/N6xvwJY3R9w