By: Annays Medeiros
“I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.”
That was U.S. President Donald Trump’s social media post on May 2025, telling American film industries to stop filmming outside the U.S. The proposed prohibition was vague and unspecific, but it was enough to make most people in the industry to worry about the hit the Canadian film industry might take.
Matthew Kennedy, program coordinator and professor of Humber’s Film and Television (FMTV) program, said most people in the film industry got worried once that statement was made, but he didn’t see much change a few months after the post.
“When that announcement was made, there was massive, overnight panic, but nothing’s come of it,” Kennedy says.
He says everyone got worried, but they waited it out and now things are back to normal.
“It was very short lived—it was about a week and then afterwards people just stopped talking about it. It stopped being a thing. Nothing ever official came from it,” he says.
“If you just follow what the producers are doing, I mean, you can just go to like the Toronto Film Office or the local guilds and unions and they show you what productions are active, he says, “and you can see they maybe started in the summer and they’re still continuing and there’s been no change.”
WHAT DOES THAT LIST LOOK LIKE?
According to City of Toronto’s website, it says there are about 14 projects being produced in Toronto in 2025.
Murdoch Mysteries 19 is one of the shows being filmed in Ontario as a well.
Andrea McCabe, a Second-Assistant director, who’s worked on the TV series Revival as one of her most recent projects, says when Trump makes threats like this, it gets everybody to stop and wait to see what happens before continuing their projects.
“People are scared, and so they’re stopping and waiting to see what happens. Because you don’t want to start a production, spend a bunch of money, get an office, hire a bunch of people, all those things, and then be like, ‘oh, we can’t do this here,’” she says.
McCabe said Trump’s threats were mostly about movies, so in terms of media being recorded in Canada, “we have a fair bit of American TV shows here. Not a lot of movies are happening.”
McCabe says companies are merging to make more movies as it’s become more expensive.
The tariffs, she says, will make it more expensive for the Americans.
“We have bonuses like – we have just as good crews as they do, but of course, we are less expensive because our dollar is lower,” she says as their dollar would buy them between 30 to 25 per cent more on everything.
She says the far right in the in the U.S. and Trump are championing the religious right, and trying to remove various books, so on some level, they’re trying to control artistic output.
“Because if you think about it, Los Angeles and Hollywood became a thing because you could do all kinds of things there that you couldn’t do anywhere else,” McCabe says.
“But what if you turn it into somewhere where you can’t do it anymore? Well, where’s the next Hollywood? Who knows? Maybe here,” she says.
McCabe says that it can lead to Americans not being able to be creative in their country, and those are people who live on having their freedom to be creative.
With that amount of government’s control, McCabe heard many people saying it’s unstable in America, so many are shifting to work outside for a while.
Edgar Romero, a content creator and visual content manager for Global Fire Live TV (GFL) studios, and who’ has been working in the film and media industry for more than 10 years, says his friend Oswald “Ozzy” Quiroz, who was a director for a small TV show in Florida, moved to Canada saying it is better to produce things here. Quiroz has since worked in unscripted productions and commercials in Canada.
Romero says Canada is a big part of the film industry, and that there’s still work as lots of films are being produced in Canada—even after Trumps’s prohibition of filming outside the U.S.
Romero mentioned how Guillermo Del Toro came to Canada and took the opportunity to record parts of his 2025 film Frankenstein.
The second biggest Film festival, TIFF, takes place in Toronto, so it’s important to keep the industry going and moving in Canada and Romero says that right now is a great time to work with films, as competition is rising and companies are in need of content, so it brings opportunities for one to have more work with that.
However, Giovanna D’Lucca, the Executive Assistant, Screen Writer and assistant director at GoFilms Production, and also the Executive assistant for GoLive TV, says the U.S. seems to support the film industry more than Canada.
“American actors have more opportunity than foreign ones, it’s more difficult to be successful and famous as a Canadian. I mean there are many Canadians that have become famous and successful in the film industry,” she says, “but U.S.A. has an advantage to that.”
“It’s just a matter of working together. The government also needs to help provide these opportunities to Canadians because…there’s a lot of potential and a lot of talent in Canada as well in the film industry with directors, and producers, and actors,” she says.
D’Lucca says, since his spring post she hasn’t seen much change.
“I’ve seen it in the news, but I don’t know if something actually changed or maybe I’m just unaware of it,” she says.
“Maybe the change will come later on, like the impact will be bigger soon, but right now no,” D’Lucca says.
Kennedy, also says he didn’t see any changes after the tariffs threat.
Whether it’s about production or post-production, animation, virtual production, none of it’s shown a direct impact from that announcement, he says.
“There’s been no executive order, as far as I know,” he says.
Kennedy mentioned one of his grads who graduated in 2019 who’s worked on Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, which was filmed in Hamilton, is very active in the union and Local 873.
“He was saying right now, it’s extremely busy. He said we have about 10 shows happening in Toronto right now, and for this time of year, that’s very high,” Kennedy says.
“So to have kind of 10 shows happening in November, it means things are thriving and very healthy for that sector of sort of traditional film and television,” he says.
Kennedy says Toronto has to offer in the GTA quality of labour exactly as any other major city in the U.S.
“And so through provincial and federal tax incentives, it makes sense for a producer to come here to make things like Welcome to Derry,” he says.
Duane Farley, the Executive Vice-President of the AMG Corp. says “It’s always advantageous for film producers from America to shoot up here because of the currency exchange.”
Farley says he’s seen less producers wanting to film in Canada, as they would rather film in the United States.
“But, you know, it all comes down to the tax credits of various provinces or states,” he says.
He says whatever makes sense for the producer, the production wins.
“But I am proudly Canadian and I think despite Trump’s tariffs that he wants to impose on productions, I think Canada has some of the best talent on the screen or behind in the entertainment business,”
-Duane Farley
“I think what’s eventually going to happen, see how we have Netflix Canada, Amazon Prime Canada—all those companies will eventually have Canadian entities and they will produce the films in their film and TV projects in Canada under those subsidies,” he says.
Farley says if American companies decide not to film in Canada, they would still do their post-productions in here.
He says Canada has some of the best post-production houses in the world, and that it is time for Canada to rise in the industry.
“We have great stories of the Canadian spirit and Canadian pride, and we need to start producing those series in TV shows, documentaries, letting the world know how cool it is to be Canadian,” he says.
“Canadians, we are very unique. That uniqueness in our way of life here needs to not only be celebrated, but it needs to be showcased more,” Farley says.