IANAEconomist either, but my understanding is that America has either the highest (or second-highest) corporate tax rate in the world. According to this chart, the U.S. appears to be No. 1.
I would think that any coporation, including movie and TV studios, would seek out whatever means available to lower that tax burden.
So, leahcim, you can now tell people that a famous actress wanted to live with you, but you turned her down.
I’m curious what shows you’re watching on network TV. For instance, I think almost no U.S. network sitcoms are filmed in Canada. And I’m having a hard time thinking of any dramas that are filmed there (Flashpoint? Warehouse 13?).
Hannibal.
US studios filming in Canada seems to be limited to shows with a lot of outdoor scenes. I assume because for indoor stuff they have soundstages in CA up and ready to go. Sitcoms are usually pretty indoor focused, which is presumably why they stay in the States.
Thought of another one. Psych is probably the most blatant example on TV right now. Its supposed to be in Santa Barbra, but is filmed in British Colombia. And its kind of a budget show, so they don’t put a ton of effort into hiding the fact that the actors are blatantly 20 degrees of latitude higher then where the scenes supposedly take place.
The TV show was a joint Canada/France production, which is why half the season was in “New York” (Toronto?) and the other was in Paris. I think that lasted for its whole run but don’t remember for sure on that.
Hmm. Not quite. It was American and French production but filmed in Vancouver and Paris for costs. This was back in '93, so it’s at least twenty years old that this practice has been done.
There aren’t many dramas on the “big 4” networks that are filmed in Canada, but a number of the ones on cable channels (such as SyFy), and on CW, do tend to be filmed up there. My wife is in a lot of TV show fandoms, and it’s a running joke that the same Vancouver-based actors keep showing up on these shows.
A few that I can think of offhand (including a few that aren’t on the air any longer):
Supernatural
Arrow
Falling Skies
The Vampire Diaries
Once Upon a Time
Battlestar Galactica
Stargate (SG-1, Atlantis)
Smallville
Being the economic driver of the capitalist nation that is the leader of the free world, California offers less than a quarter of the tax breaks to film and television than British Columbia does.
British Columbia tax credits for film and television $437,000,000
Source: Government of British Columbia Budget
California tax credits for film and television $100,000,000 per year
Source: Government of California’s California Film Commission
http://www.film.ca.gov/Incentives.htm
Being a socialist nation that has universal health care covered through taxes, taxes in Canada are lower than in the USA for both corporations and individuals:
Canada (Federal and Provincial combined) average corporate tax rate 26%
USA (Federal and State combined) average corporate tax rate 40%
Canada average (Federal and Provincial combined) personal tax rate 29%
USA average (Federal and State combined) personal tax rate 39.6%
Source: KPMG
http://www.kpmg.com/Global/en/services/Tax/tax-tools-and-resources/Pages/default.aspx
By having lower corporate taxes and higher film and television subsidies, British Columbia attracts film and television production, and by having lower personal taxes and better social benefits such as health care, British Columbia attracts people to provide the skill and talent base for that industry.
Bottom line: British Columbia is competitive, so it is taking a bite out of Hollywood. It makes me wonder, which is the capitalist nation and which is the socialist nation? I think the USA would do better if it approached issues like this pragmatically rather than ideologically, so as to get their governments working for them and providing a more enticing environment for both corporations and individuals.
This is not surprising, considering that the Canadian network television stations lean on news programming and Canadian franchises of international reality shows (e.g. Canada’s Got Talent, Canadian Idol, The Bachelor Canada, etc.) for their Canadian content obligations, most of which has little appeal to the U.S. market. Whereas Canadian specialty cable channels don’t have news to fall back on so they have to come up with other content (although you still see franchise reality shows like Come Dine With Me Canada, etc. on cable).
I didn’t catch the name (the request was made through a mutual friend), but I expect that “famous” would be incorrect. The leads to all these movies are the usual Hollywood actors, with bit parts filled with local talent (or in this case, pretending-to-be-local talent) to fill the quota.
(I did however get a bit part in Thor as a body double for the close-up shots of Chris Hemsworth’s abs. This is a true statement. 
)
The first five years of the X-Files were filmed in Vancouver.
Vancouver, which was pretending to be the fictional city of Seacouver, WA. (A portmanteau of Seattle (which I believe Seacouver was originally supposed to be) and Vancouver.)
The Cdn dollar (the Loony) has been near par with the US buck for over five years.
Yeah, my wife watches a lot of HGTV and I think half their shows are Canadian.
And a bunch of them are not specifically Canadian and just “don’t mention what city they’re in” when it’s obviously Toronto. I still wonder how the economics works that makes renovation shows such a lucrative niche for Canadian productions.
Likewise. By this point, I suspect that every Canadian citizen has been the subject of an HGTV home-improvement show. 
It’s not necessarily that those shows are especially lucrative (they might be, for all I know), but whether they’re lucrative or not, HGTV Canada is required to have 50% Canadian content, so that’s why they make them; selling them for rebroadcast in the U.S. is a nice bonus, I imagine.
And it’s not just home renovation shows: Canadian (or part-Canadian) children’s cartoons like Caillou, Franklin, Mike the Knight, Max & Ruby, etc. (which count as Can-con for specialty channels like Treehouse) are also exported to the U.S.
For which, on behalf of all sentient Canadians, I most sincerely apologize.
I think that’s a special case. A lot of airport scenes, including most of The Terminal have been filmed at Mirabel, which has a big modern airport terminal that’s normally deserted. Mirabel was a boondoggle, a giant airport built more than an hour’s drive from downtown Montreal that nobody ever really wanted to use. Since the airlines finally pulled out, airport scenes can be filmed there without building sets or disrupting passengers. I don’t know of anything else like it in North America.
To a significant degree it is a result of what sorts of shows can obtain tax credits and funding.
Here’s a listof what is out there for tax credits for Canadian productions, including the 16% Canadian labourFilm and the Video Production Services Tax Credit for foreign or domestic companies or the 20% Canadian labour Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit tax credits for domestic companies, and for the sake of the Holmes on Homes example (because when he first set up his own production company it was in his home province of Ontario), here’s alistof what is out there for tax credits for Ontario productions, including the and the 25% Ontario labour Ontario Production Services Tax Credit for foreign or domestic companies and the 35% – 45% Ontario labour Ontario Film and Television Tax Credit for domestic companies. As you can see, there are significant tax credits for foreign companies wanting to film in Ontario, Canada, and even more significant tax credits for Ontario companies wanting to film in Ontario, Canada. The goal of all this is to encourage the development of a film and video industry in Ontario, so as to better provide people in Ontario with home-grown productions rather than just imports. If Holmes were to set up a company I Ontario to shoot in Hamilton using Canadian labour, his company’s combined federal and provincial tax credits would be 70% off an average corporate rate that is already 14% below the average combined federal and state tax in California.
Now let’s add to this Canadian content rules that require over-air broadcast, cable and satellite TV networks in Canada to have about half of it’s content Canadian content. Since most of networks compete for viewership, including competition in many markets with American networks, they are under pressure to show good shows, so they too fund productions. CBC, CTV and Global each fund their own, and many of the cable (Shaw, Rogers, Bell, etc.) and satellite outfits group together to fund via the Canadian Media Fund.
What it comes down to is that both tax savings and funding opportunities open up for domestic producers, and to a lesser but still significant degree, to foreign producers filming herein Kanukistan.
That explains why Holmes would want to set up in his home of Ontario. The next question is why is it that Canada has a niche for home renovation shows as opposed to other types of shows.
Reality shows are cheap to produce, but Canadian federal tax credits are not applicable to surveillance type reality shows (following folks about while they do things, be it live in a house and nitter at each other, or compete against each other, or run from police, or face Judge Judy), nor do they apply to a lot of standard TV fare other than drama and sit-coms, which can be hard to syndicate internationally if they look too Canadian. Home renovation shows slip in between the cracks nicely, for they are cheap as beans, are easily syndicated internationally due to few cultural barriers in their content, and most importantly, they are eligible for the federal and provincial Canadian content based tax credits, which in turn make it easier for producers to attract further funding, and at the end of the day, take home a bigger net. Here is a list of what is not eligible for Canadian federal and provincial tax credits:
Once you exclude the above for Canadian content tax and funding purposes, and exclude dramas and sit-coms that are both more expensive to produce and more culturally focussed so therefore less marketable in international syndication, home reno shows start to look like a pretty good bet. We got ‘em and we sell ‘em cheap to abroad. Our little well-constructed niche.