Once upon a time if you were making films in Canada, you needed to get a theatrical release or a television deal to qualify for production tax credits, as administered by the Canadian Audio Visual Certification Office, or CAVCO.

No more.

Online distribution now qualifies and the newest approved service is CanadaScreens, owned and operated by the First Weekend Club.

Posting your film on CanadaScreens.ca will now trigger tax credits, providing eligible productions with fully refundable tax credits on their qualified labour spend.

First Weekend Club’s executive director, Anita Adams, says:

“This is exciting news for the organization as it puts us in a position to be of much greater service to the Canadian film community, providing them not only with a platform for their Canadian content, but a platform that will enable them to recoup costs through the tax credit program.”

In an email to me she goes on:

“We work directly with whoever holds the digital rights to the content — so we work both with filmmakers and distributors equally. More filmmakers are now choosing to go down the self-distribution route and are reaching out to us directly. In some cases, we may help release these films theatrically by offering promotional services, and then launch their films on our VOD platform. This is a model we quite like actually.”

Please read the CAVCO regulations carefully; I’m not clear if they require a Canadian distributor deal, or if self-distribution qualifies. See Section 30 above.

Here’s the full list of acceptable online services.

My take: this is great news for filmmakers in Canada. Keep up the great work, First Weekend Club!