Vancouver: Checkbox #24: Expand financial management skills of industry. Checkbox #5: Streamline tax policy administration and application processes. Checkbox #20: Enhance regional bonus on tax polices to promote increased production beyond the Lower Mainland. Checkbox #14: Work with communities to ensure that producers have quick, easy and reliable access to locations. Checkbox #29: Mount PR campaign to foster greater understanding and support of industry regionally, provincially and nationally.

The West Coast production industry has its work cut out, according to the summary document from the first British Columbia Film and Television Summit held last October, if the business is to double to $2 billion by 2004 – the challenge lobbed by Rick Thorpe, the minister of competition, science and enterprise.

The oft-delayed document – The Rising Economy Star: Charting the Course for BC’s Film and Television Industry – was released in late August and sets out 35 specific tasks among five broad categories of recommendations:

* Build the domestic film and television industry

* Improve competitiveness in attracting foreign film and television production

* Expand infrastructure

* Ensure adequate supply of skilled workforce

* Strengthen ties with all levels of government.

Implementation of the so-called Five-Point Action Plan, created with the participation of more than 75 industry insiders and representatives from the three levels of government, will be the responsibility of the federal and provincial governments and the local industry, says entertainment lawyer Arthur Evrensel, a member of the sponsoring Motion Picture Production Industry Association of British Columbia.

‘We are working with it as a blueprint,’ he says. ‘We’ve a long way to go.’

Competitiveness is a major theme of the recommendations. Exempting film production from provincial sales tax, expediting border travel for foreign workers, supporting the B.C. Film Commission and finding a way to ‘mitigate’ the loss of tax shelters are key tactics.

The health of the domestic production sector is also key in doubling the size of the industry. Establishing a regionally based broadcaster in B.C., increasing federal funding, stimulating investment and expanding the tax incentive programs to include animation and visual effects are on the wish list.