A proposed new permit fee for location shooting in the City of Toronto has led a number of industry advocacy groups to warn that an additional charge could dull Toronto’s attraction as a centre for domestic and foreign production.

The Directors Guild of Canada and other industry groups are urging the City of Toronto to adopt one set of guidelines when it comes to administering fees for locations and the use of other city-run services.

While city council is in the midst of amalgamation and a unified policy for dealing with the film and television industry is supposed to be in the works, there’s no rhyme or reason to how various incidental fees are levied: they vary widely in municipalities such as Scarborough, North York, Etobicoke and the old city of Toronto.

‘We want one overall, cohesive policy that addresses all the different charges that the film industry pays for its production costs to various levels of government,’ says Marcus Handman, executive director of the dgc.

If the permit fee is implemented, producers would pay $53 for each location where they shoot. In other major production centres across North America, the issue of permits and how much cities charge varies tremendously from place to place. According to a report by the City of Toronto’s economic development committee, which surveyed some other cities for comparison, Vancouver has a permit fee of $65 (which includes clearing of the street of cars and placement of no-parking signs and traffic barriers), New York has no fee, San Francisco has a fee of us$100 to us$300, while Los Angles has a flat fee of us$450, which covers one to 10 permits.

On April 7, Toronto’s budget committee turned down the economic development committee’s proposal for the permit fee.

Brenda Librecz, managing director of the economic development office says, ‘The budget committee is recommending that there be no permit fee introduced, but no new staff would be hired when the Toronto Film and Television Office goes citywide.’

The issue still has to go before city council on April 26-27, when council could still approve the proposed permit fee while it approves its budget for the entire city.

As soon as the Film and Television Office is centralized into one office, it will handle about 5,200 permits per year, up 2,000 from last year.

‘We don’t want to scare away investment,’ says Librecz, ‘we are here to create jobs and revenue for the city. But now we have an amalgamated service, council could vote to increase the Toronto Film and Television Office’s budget.’ .