Score another one for Vancouver, and give the credit to a very healthy tax credit system. Nova Scotia, are y0u paying attention?
According to this article in The Hollywood Reporter, Animal Logic, the studio that produced The Lego Movie, will have a shop up and running in Vancouver, BC as early as September. They expect to be creating around 300 jobs at the shop.
Creating 300 jobs or bringing up 300 guys from LA to work the same jobs they did in California? When a foreign company moves to Vancouver it’s to cash in on the tax credits. Doesn’t mean they’ll actually be employing any Canadians, if the guys I work with are any indications (same people I worked with in LA and Louisiana for the past 10 years.)
MPC is probably the only major studio in Van employing a lot of Canadians, and that’s cause they hire a bunch of students and work them like crazy.
Hi Jason. No argument from me for the tax credit motivation for foreign companies. Lower cost for labour is what always drives for-profit organizations. I don’t know where you work, so I can’t comment on how they’re managing to qualify for Canadian tax credits without employing Canadians, as generally our system has guidelines built in that only guarantees credits on qualifying-Canadian labour. Vancouver has seen a rise in foreign workers, as has Toronto and the maritimes, and they’ve all had to go through our generally arduous visa process, which seems to change as quickly as our other legislation. All I can attest to is the hiring frenzy we see both here on the job board, and at events like the recent TAAFI job fair here in Toronto. Vancouver studios are looking everywhere, and hiring a lot of Canadians. To be fair, I’m not in the studios themselves, so I don’t know what the numbers are, but I don’t see the financial sense for these shops to simply move their offices up here and import all their talent, then spend money sending recruiters out across the country, if they don’t intend to hire home grown talent.
The simplest logic is that you can’t cash in on tax credits without hiring Canadians. If someone’s doing it, then they’ve worked out a system I’m not aware of.