Soaring loonie could sink Vancouver's TV industry

The Canuck buck hit parity with the U.S. greenback on Tuesday for the first time since July 2008, sparking fears that many local television productions will head for cheaper pastures. And with economists predicting our dollar will hover around or above par for some time, attracting new American television series to Canada may get much tougher.

“It isn't good, that's for sure,” said Brian Baker of the Directors Guild of Canada (DGC), which represents workers in film and television across the country. “Parity’s a psychological number that scares us all the time, but when you get down to pen and paper, we're only a couple of cents [higher] than we were a couple of months ago.”

Canada's film and television industry relies on U.S. productions - more than 80% of production in B.C. comes from south of the border. And with tax incentives now the biggest factor in determining where a U.S. project will be produced, the industry is calling on provincial and federal governments to increase incentives, such as loans and tax credits, to lure more international films and series to Canada.

Still, news that parity may be the new normal for the Canadian dollar is not causing the same panic as back in 2008. Many production companies have already adjusted to the higher loonie, which has been slowly creeping closer to the U.S. dollar for almost two years.

“The dollar's the least of our worries,” said Crawford Hawkins of the DGC’s British Columbia District Council. “[U.S. producers have] become accustomed to the fact that it's not going back to 72 cents... The issue will be what the bigger production incentives will be.”