All that glittered this weekend at the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) Awards in Toronto were not just Bollywood stars like Shah Rukh Khan, Anil Kapoor and Bipasha Basu.

The Canadian film industry is looking ahead to a pot of gold that could materialize once Ottawa concludes a first-time official coproduction treaty with India.

“It gives us an opportunity for two different filmmaking cultures to come together and grow together into something new,” Peter Finestone, Toronto’s film commissioner, told Playback Daily.

The federal government a year ago first signaled that negotiations had started with New Delhi for a coproduction treaty.

“International coproductions are a major strength of our economy, and our government looks forward to finalizing negotiations with the government of India as soon as possible,” Heritage minister James Moore said Friday in a statement ahead of Bollywood’s Oscars unfolding in Toronto over the weekend. A timeline for the treaty’s finalization was not given.

Finestone said a future coproduction treaty held out many benefits for the Canadian industry.

The Indian film industry has Bollywood in Mumbai and a thriving Tamil film industry in the south of the country, he pointed out.

Veteran Bollywood actor Kabir Bedi, who has acted in two Hindi-language pictures shot here, said Indian producers already recognize Canada as film-friendly.

“I feel that with tax incentives and a coproduction treaty, the traffic between Bollywood and Canada will only grow,” Bedi said.