I live in Canadian city, I know some of the officials for my city who manage the budgeting and scheduling for film crews in our city. I also know some of the music and film production studios that are hired out for these shoots. We are also one of the primary cities for filming in Canada.

I know for a fact that we subsidize film production into our city. Us tax payers literally pay money to the film companies to subsidize their costs. They do not pay us or our city. The idea is that this would promote more use of local businesses. It does not usually work out that way though.

A bunch of investigative reporting has been done in our local news that indicates that the majority of the companies filming here do not even hire local businesses, even going as far as to have their food frozen and flown in with their gear because they can treat it as a subsidized cost.

In short, they frequently do not help our community, they actively tie up our streets, don't employ local businesses, and exploit our tax system to make a profit on their shoots. Never underestimate corporate greed and its ability to subvert tax laws for their own gain.

To make matters worse, from the folks I know who run local film, recording, catering, etc, they indicate that they have to aggressively cut their prices down and make almost no profit because the corporations hiring them are unscrupulous in negotiation. If they don't cave to their demands, they corporation walks away and brings in their own stuff from outside the province/Canada and writes it off as further subsidized costs.

That definitely wasn't the case.