Vancouver: It’s official. The anti-runaway production lobby terminated an estimated $80 million in direct spending in Vancouver in 2002 when the US$170-million Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines abandoned six weeks of preproduction here to shoot instead in L.A.

At the time, when the fervent and protectionist Film and Television Action Committee was speaking loudest in Hollywood, the producers insisted that preferred studio space had suddenly become available at home.

However, on Sept. 5, T3 star Arnold Schwarzenegger, now a Republican candidate for governor in California, confirmed that he didn’t want to shoot in Canada and trimmed US$8 million from his fees and budget – the cost difference between shooting here and there – to keep the feature in the Golden State.

‘I put in personal money of mine. The producers and the heads of departments were willing to shave a little bit off the budget and we were able to film… Terminator 3 right here in Los Angeles,’ said Schwarzenegger in a speech to the California Chamber of Commerce, which has endorsed his bid for governor. ‘And at the same time [we] helped create jobs – hundreds of new jobs – and that’s what I want to do as governor. I want to bring businesses back to this state.’

Never mind that Schwarzenegger shot The 6th Day, a box-office disappointment (reportedly just bobbing above US$100 million in receipts on a US$82-million budget), in Vancouver in 1999.

Beyond Schwarzenegger’s politicking, it’s difficult to quantify the impact of lobbying on Vancouver, but it does exist.

‘[The anti-runaway production lobby] is having a bit of an effect, but at the end of the day, it’s still a business that’s all about money,’ says Gerry Rutherford, business agent at IATSE camera Local 669 in Vancouver.

Certainly the global economic downturn has hurt production in Vancouver, as has the evaporation of Canadian drama. But FTAC has simmered down about the loss of U.S. jobs and, for the record, Screen Actors Guild president Melissa Gilbert is shooting the MOW Hollywood Wives: The New Generation in Calgary and Directors Guild of America president Michael Apted is shooting the feature Scheherazade in London.

The new trend for U.S. productions shooting in Vancouver and looking to protect U.S. jobs seems to be to import Hollywood craftspeople, effectively increasing costs and decreasing opportunities for local employment.

According to Rutherford, the volume of permits – applications that allow U.S. producers to bring in workers to IA’s jurisdiction – has risen dramatically. It’s not unusual for the six preemptory permits in the contract to be filled by American department heads, but there are more requests for department seconds and thirds to be brought in from L.A. The local union has to vet each permit and the producers have to give ‘reasonable’ consideration to locals. The union can then grant the permit or refuse it, unless the production wants to pay for a matching job for a local union member.

Vancouver’s 2003 production roster has been characterized by big U.S. features such as Paycheck and Chronicles of Riddick – the kind of shows that don’t flinch at paying for extra hands from L.A. to keep the shows on track.

And that gives rise to a tax-credit irony. The more expensive the production is and the more the producers spend in B.C., the bigger the labor-based tax credit is. Each local job is subsidized 25%, which the producers consider ‘found money’ that can pay the cost of importing a worker from L.A.

For Crawford Hawkins, managing director of the Directors Guild of Canada’s B.C. office, the impact of the anti-runaway production lobby is less damaging than the economic story and the downturn in television. The imported jobs, he says, simply reflect B.C.’s lack of experience on big-budget shoots.

‘There is nobody with the credits equal to the task [of running these big shows],’ he says. And doing a US$150-million movie means there is room for a few experienced production people from L.A.

‘We have to reinvent ourselves a bit, get scrubbed up with a new attitude toward our clients,’ says Hawkins, who is optimistic that production volumes will return. ‘We’ve become an expensive place to shoot. We have to be more inventive to help [the networks and studios] with their costs.’

B.C. Film Commissioner Susan Croome says producers continue to make choices based on cost-benefit analysis. Runaway production becomes an issue only when production volumes wane in L.A., she says, and there has been little impact, T3 aside, in B.C. to date.

Croome will be visiting L.A. this month to remind U.S. studios that ‘B.C. should be their first consideration.’ She adds that a number of shows budgeted for B.C. have been delayed in getting greenlit.

‘We’ll be focusing more attention on the $2-million to $10-million feature,’ she explains. ‘If MOWs and miniseries are down, these smaller features help fill the gap. And our crews are well-suited to pick up the low-budget feature.’