Howard Rosen is CEO/executive producer of Roadhouse Productions in Toronto, where he oversees the development, production, financing and servicing of feature/cable films, television series, multi-camera live events, commercials and broadband interactive projects.

‘ALL Because a Flea Went Kachoo.’ That Dr. Seuss citation is one of the first things that comes to my mind when thinking about the issue of ACTRA limiting the permits for non-Canadian principal actors in non-Canadian productions, and the subsequent U.S. campaign on ‘runaway’ productions. (This kind of perspective tends to hit me late at night with an empty glass of wine in one hand and a cell phone with a spent battery in the other.)

It is without doubt that these permit limits will have a whiplash effect on the whole Canadian industry. Try as I might, I don’t understand the rationale of handcuffing productions that provide such a high level of employment opportunity for Canadian film and TV making talent, including actors. Sure, I understood concerns about abuse and permit requests for the producer’s ‘girlfriend,’ but why deny permits for actors who financiers of these foreign productions say are crucial to the deal?

Meanwhile, on the runaway front, the U.S. guilds and unions are using their spin doctors to pressure studios and producers from coming to Canada. I actually watched, in slack-jawed amazement, a California-based politician explaining on CNN (with a straight face!) that as a direct result of runaway production to Canada,

out-of-work U.S. technicians have been forced to work in Northern California, resulting in a boom in pornography production.

In light of that type of campaign stirring up the prospect of countervailing tariffs and offsetting U.S. tax credits, what better way to further diminish any production advantage than by telling the U.S. producers that they may bring their productions and their money here, but ‘by golly, you can’t use the key cast that got the financing for you.’

I don’t see this as a cultural issue, and I sure hope this is not a matter of ACTRA waiting for the U.S. producers to acquiesce. Because they won’t. This is not about water exports, where we have it and they don’t. Production is totally mobile, with a growing number of viable national and global alternatives.

I see the scenario unfolding as follows: if ACTRA continues its agenda that sends foreign productions elsewhere, first the service producers will be affected adversely, to be followed by a great many of the service providers and their employees. The next domino will fall on the indigenous producer, who will be faced with a smaller pool of suppliers, resulting in greater competition for scarcer resources. Costs will naturally escalate, making even indigenous production less economical to shoot in Canada than in other jurisdictions.

Ultimately, it’s in our hands. We as an industry have to decide if perceived short-term gain of these types of edicts is more important than long-term damage to the industry. As a producer of indigenous and service productions, my feeling is why waste time being the sneezing flea, why not find ways to be the mouse that roared?