They’re on a mission: With foreign location shooting in Ontario on an upswing, major industry players are headed to Los Angeles in January to drum up still more business.

The marketing mission sponsored by Film Ontario, the city of Toronto and the Ontario Media Development Corp will take place from January 10 to 13.

The Ontario contingent are set to meet with Los Angeles-based senior production executives and FX supervisors.

The production mission comes amid buoyant film and TV shooting in Ontario, despite the Canadian and American dollars now virtually at par.

Paul Bronfman, chairman and CEO of the Comweb Group and a Film Ontario board member, insisted the Hollywood studios in recent years experienced rival U.S. locales with unstable tax credits, and are now returning to Canada for financing certainty and familiarity.

That said, the North American film tax credit scene remains in flux, with states and provinces continuing to aggressively launch or sweeten financial incentives to attract film and TV production.

A U.S. financial rescue package passed into law in early December included a provision to reinstate a so-called runaway production incentive that allows producers to immediately deduct qualifying expenditures in the year they occur for the first $15 million to $20 million spent.

That saves producers from having to spread or amortize those costs over a period of years.

The tax measure, first introduced in 2004 as a financial bail-out for American film and TV producers, aims to encourage U.S. production to stay at home and not go overseas, especially to Canada.

Another likely talking point for Ontario industry reps as they do their Hollywood studio rounds in January will be the fate of the harmonized sales tax (HST) in British Columbia.

That western province is set to hold a referendum on whether to keep the HST, which is recoverable by foreign producers shooting locally.

Couple the HST with provincial and federal tax credits and Hollywood producers that shoot in B.C. or Ontario continue to enjoy significant cost savings, even with the high loonie.

That said, any move by B.C. to turf the HST after the upcoming referendum is expected to benefit Ontario, where foreign producers can now recover the former 8% PST as part of the newly-branded HST.