Lights go up this week at the Toronto International Film Festival, a celebrated event exemplifying Canada’s place in the global film industry.
But with the U.S. considering a national incentive program to keep film productions in the U.S., could Canada — home to many U.S.-based film sets — see its film industry profile change?
U.S. President Donald Trump said last week there is bipartisan support to create a federal tax incentive to keep film production in the U.S. and stop it from moving “to Canada and other Countries.”
“[The U.S. film industry] is being dissipated in its entirety,” he wrote after a meeting with actor Jon Voigt. “Hollywood is a Complete and Total Disaster! … There is no incentive to be there, and it is hurting California very badly.”
The prospective legislation, which Trump dubbed the Motion Picture, Television and Entertainment Revitalization Act, is making waves among film professionals and advocates in the U.S. who have been calling for years for these investments.
Jobs have certainly been disappearing from Hollywood’s original hub. Employment in Los Angeles County’s film and television sector was down roughly 26 per cent at the end of 2025 compared to the end of 2010 and down 38 per cent compared to a mid-2022 high, according to the Otis College of Art and Design.
In 2025, there were 8,581 total shoot days for feature film and TV productions in Greater Los Angeles, a 61 per cent drop from 2021, according to FilmLA, which tracks production volume in L.A. and beyond.
Trump’s announcement might make you think that Canada — which has long been a popular filming destination for international productions, many of which are helmed by U.S. companies — is sucking up the majority of these productions and jobs.
But while industry data shows an overall decline in TV production, those that are being made are frequently finding homes not only in L.A., but also other American states and the U.K.
Roughly 25 per cent of U.S.-scripted TV series distributed in 2024 were filmed in Los Angeles, according to FilmLA, with 12.5 per cent filmed in the U.K., 9.6 per cent in the state of Georgia and 8.4 per cent in British Columbia.
The U.K. beat Canadian provinces as a filming jurisdiction for streaming TV series, cable TV series and movies with theatrical releases in 2024. Canada only came out on top in made-for-TV movies — roughly 26 per cent of TV films distributed in 2024 were filmed in B.C., FilmLA found.
So if Canada isn’t absorbing the lion’s share of film and TV productions by U.S. studios, why are we getting highlighted in messaging from Trump?
Canada vs. U.S. for location
This is an old battleground for U.S. politicians, Hollywood labour groups and Canada, going back to the 1990s and early 2000s.
Canada became one of the first countries in 1997 to implement a federal tax credit to attract foreign productions. It differed from previous tactics, such as New York opening film offices in the 1960s and assisting productions with permits, by being a direct financial incentive that covered a percentage of qualifying Canadian labour on sets. It was quickly followed by a B.C. incentive.
“They were really large enough that Hollywood took notice and packed up and really did go to Vancouver in the late ’90s,” Jade Miller, an associate professor in communication studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., told CBC News.
It whipped up fury south of the border, sparking protests in Hollywood and a call endorsed by the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the actors union, in 2001 for countervailing tariffs against U.S. productions that had filmed in Canada with the aid of subsidies.
The Director’s Guild of America and SAG commissioned a report claiming the U.S. economy had lost billions in 1998 due to U.S. producers filming abroad, predominantly in Canada.
The Canadian film industry hit back with its own figures, claiming the U.S. had inflated the numbers, rejecting the framing that Canada was stealing business that “belongs” in the U.S. and pointing out that Canada was putting money into Hollywood.
There have been cases of Canada winning a production that would have otherwise filmed in the U.S. — Ang Lee wanted to film the Oscar-winning film Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming, but went with Alberta because financial incentives and film infrastructure in Wyoming couldn’t compete, Alberta producer Tom Cox said in 2006.
But opponents of Canada’s incentives ultimately decided the best way to defeat them was to join them. U.S. states and countries around the world rushed to implement or expand their own tax incentive programs.
As of May, there were at least 120 production incentives across the globe, according to a Global Incentives Index by SPI. In Canada, nearly every province has an incentive program, usually in the form of tax credits. The majority of U.S. states have their own tax credits, including one in California that was expanded last year.
“There was a very brief period in time when it was like Canada stood out from everyone else with the biggest tax incentives, and they were the first there,” Miller said.
But with financial incentives now available across the globe, and the U.K. snagging large film productions such as the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday, it’s unclear why Canada is getting the majority of the heat from the U.S.
“It is just political rhetoric,” Miller said.
U.S. President Donald Trump has called for a U.S. federal film and TV tax incentive. As CBC’s Terri Trembath reports, stakeholders in Alberta’s film industry say it could mean fewer American productions, but they’re banking on provincial and federal tax credits and the benefits of the low Canadian dollar to keep productions coming back.
Cynthia Littleton, editor in chief of Variety, told CBC News this new move from Trump comes “in the context of midterm elections in November that … will have a huge impact on the future of Congress and the second half of Trump’s second term.”
She added that “there is a swell of trying to save American manufacturing, and this is a form of American manufacturing.”
Trump has hit out against the film industry during trade tensions with Canada before. In May 2025, Trump said he would institute a 100 per cent tariff on movies filmed outside the U.S., but did not follow through on the threat.
What’s to come for film sets in Canada?
It’s not clear how a U.S. federal incentive could impact Canada, Reynolds Mastin, president and CEO of the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA), told CBC News. In 2024/25, foreign film and TV productions generated more than 97,000 jobs in Canada, according to the CMPA.
“This is a huge industry we’re talking about. It’s around $10 billion in GDP, 180,000 full-time jobs,” Mastin told CBC News, adding that around half of that comes from foreign productions filming here.
According to the CMPA, foreign productions, including visual effects done by Canadian VFX studios, jumped 9.5 per cent in 2024/25, reaching $5.3 billion in volume. Meanwhile, Canadian film and TV productions decreased 2.2 per cent.
Recent Hollywood productions filmed or worked on in Canada include Frankenstein and Tron: Ares. The filming of HBO’s The Last of Us contributed more than $141 million to Alberta’s economy, according to a Motion Picture Association Canada report in 2023.
Experts say that a U.S. federal tax incentive doesn’t mean U.S. productions in Canada would vanish. The country’s low dollar, unique landscape and skilled workforce are still huge draws, Mastin said.
His main takeaway is that if the U.S. is rallying behind its film industry, Canada needs to do the same by putting more money towards homegrown projects and by continuing to back the Online Streaming Act.
The act, which U.S. negotiators reportedly tried to get removed from trade agreements in August, requires global streamers to boost Canadian content the way broadcasters are required to in Canada.
“At the end of the day, we can’t control what happens in Washington, D.C., but we can control our own cultural destiny as a country, and we can ensure that we have a strong Canadian domestic industry,” Mastin said.
