Hi – my name is MK Harris! I’m 25 years old, and I just moved to Halifax in January to be a Key Poser at Copernicus Studios, in Halifax.
I graduated from Sheridan College in Oakville around this time last year, but when I got the offer to work at Copernicus, I jumped at the chance. My mum’s side of the family is from Nova Scotia so I grew up hearing stories about how beautiful the province is and how friendly the people were – and none of them were exaggerated. Everyone here is so incredibly friendly and thoughtful, and my coworkers at Copernicus are hard-working, dedicated, and a joy to work with.
Halifax is a place I would love to stay to live and work in, but these budget cuts mean that I will likely be unable to stay and will have to go
wherever the work is, despite how much I’d love to remain here. Since January there have been over 15 new hires at Copernicus alone from out of province, the States, and even Europe! We’ve all chosen to make Halifax our home, so please support us in our fight!
#NSFilmJobs #FacesofFilmNS #NSFilmTaxCredit
The problem is this doesn’t show loyalty to the province. “We’ll be forced to leave”. No, you could get another job in another industry in Nova Scotia if you really cared about location. You just want to work in your current animation job without moving. That’s what all of us in VFX wanted too, but tax credits forced us to move. Don’t support tax credits, build your skills to go somewhere where the industry is actually sustainable. But as long as you support tax credits, you doom the industry and all of us in it to a migratory life.
It takes a lot of time to obtain a skill set. Most people will not have the capacity to obtain another skill to stay in Nova Scotia. Also, in Nova Scotia specifically, no industry is flourishing so your suggestion is particularly useless here.
There is a very strong case to be made to get rid of tax credits. But by getting rid of them in only one part of the country, and cutting them so drastically and on such short notice, there’s no time to adapt in an attempt to stay. The sudden removal without consulting the film community is the bigger crisis than the simple fact of the loss of the funds.
I understand your frustration, and I see your points when you draw parallels to the VFX community, but the system is too deeply broken for a “suck it up, it’s hard everywhere” argument to feel like it’s being made in good faith. You’re aren’t trying to help anyone by repeating a variation on it across several articles.