PIPELINE COMPANY SEEKS HAMMER
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B.C. BACK IN BLACK, DEEP IN DEBT
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LOCAL TEEN LAST SEEN A MONTH AGO
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WEDNESDAY
JULY 23 2014 www.burnabynewsleader.com
He was once B.C.’s youngest-ever elected official, and now he hopes to become an MP in Burnaby. See Page A5
SkyTrain chaos strikes again
WANDA CHOW/NEWSLEADER
Ron Hrynuik, general manager of Bridge Studios in Burnaby, says the film industry is now back on the upswing after increased competition and a strong Canadian dollar slowed the number of productions coming to B.C. in recent years.
Local film industry back on upswing Huge boost to Burnaby economy Wanda Chow
wchow@burnabynewsleader.com
In many ways, the health of the local film industry was mirrored by the recent health scare of Ron Hrynuik. Hrynuik, the general manager of Bridge Studios in Burnaby, was skiing at Blackcomb in February 2012 when he collapsed from a heart attack. Luckily for him, the man skiing
right behind him happened to be a doctor visiting from Seattle. The doctor performed CPR until an automated external defibrillator (AED) arrived to jump-start his heart. Hrynuik, 54, ended up having quadruple bypass surgery and was off work for a lengthy period of recovery. That coincided with a downturn in the local film business when productions were slow to arrive at Bridge Studios.
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“They didn’t miss me,” the North Burnaby resident said with a laugh. It was a far cry from 2007 and 2008 when productions were lined up for studio time one after the other. That was followed by a drop in business in 2010 when the Canadian dollar started going up, a jump in bookings in 2011 and then a really bad year in 2012. “Nobody saw it coming,” recalled Hrynuik, who also serves on the board of the Motion Picture Production Industry Association of
Please see PRODUCTIONS, A3
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B.C. (MPPIA) Other jurisdictions, including South Carolina and Louisiana, started offering higher tax credits for film shoots that located there. Ontario began offering a 25 per cent tax credit on all film shoot spending. British Columbia, meanwhile, has maintained a 33 per cent tax credit on labour costs of local shoots, which generally make up about half of a production’s location shoot budget.
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For the second time in less than a week, a technical issue caused a major disruption with the SkyTrain system after service on two lines was shut down on Monday. All SkyTrain cars on Metro Vancouver’s Expo and Millennium lines were halted. The Canada Line was not affected and was operating extra trains to help offset the problems on the other two lines, said the regional transportation authority. Bus bridges between stations were also added. TransLink advised commuters to make other transportation arrangements while they dealt with the technical issue. Last week, on Thursday night, SkyTrain service between Burnaby and Surrey was disrupted for several hours, affecting service for thousands of passengers. TransLink offered an apology Friday morning for the delay. “We apologize to our customers for this unusual incident, which caused parts of our SkyTrain system to be out of service for such a lengthy period of time,” said Fred Cummings, president of TransLink’s B.C. Rapid Transit Co. subsidiary.