Some economists argue the best thing that can be done to help an underutilized economic resource – like a downtown core in decline – is nothing. The concept is that the very low costs associated with abandoned real estate will naturally attract artisans and entrepreneurs and small, young start-up businesses. But over time many of them will begin to prosper and before you know it, you have Greenwich Village.

Years of mostly well-intentioned government incompetence has brought our extraordinarily blessed country of Canada in 1995 the gifts of massive debt, political instability, one of the world’s weakest currencies and a high unemployment rate – a general state of decline. This also is oddly a good environment for an export-based entertainment business.

In Canada’s far east – along our stormy Atlantic coast – our country’s signature problems are basically worse. So perhaps the soil for growing an entertainment business out here is in some ways more fertile.

Until recently, filmmaking in these parts has been mostly a kind of quaint little cottage industry supported by our exploitation of the national acceptance that the ‘regional’ voice should be heard, and therefore financed through a myriad of government agencies and government-legislated patrons.

But something changed this year – I think on March 17, or perhaps it was June 26. The quaint little regional voice has started transforming itself into a real industry. It might have to do with the fact that the government purses are looking worn and empty, but I believe – and this could be hubris – that we out here in the land of ghosts and pirates and highland dancing and Keith’s beer have storytelling in the blood, or at least in the culture.

I believe that if we cobble together the subsidies that are available to us, and hustle our product around the globe, we have the ability to put together internationally competitive productions, even in our capital-starved frontier.

And something like that is happening in the Atlantic provinces in 1995. It hasn’t hurt that local governments have decided that neck-up businesses like the film industry might be good ways to soak up unemployed university graduates. But I also think that our region’s producers have somehow begun to crack the code of how to make products people want to watch, and that, combined with the competitive benefits of our unfortunately very weak economy, are priming the pump of a film business that has been nearly doubling year by year, and which I believe will continue on a strongly upward trend.

paul donovan is president of Salter Street Films, Halifax.