Feel free to unbuckle your seatbelts.

The roller-coaster ride that was the ACTRA strike has seemingly ended, and jobs are now sliding into Toronto from upcoming guest shoots The Incredible Hulk, Saw 4 and American Pie 6.

A lot can happen in a week.

On Feb. 16, a Canadian production industry fearing it was going off the rails saw a settlement to end the strike killed by Hollywood studio CEOs.

But only days later, the CFTPA was partying at Ottawa’s Hard Rock Cafe and ACTRA at The Carlu in Toronto, after a face-saving formula on new media residuals was agreed upon in a new Independent Production Agreement that still must be ratified. And the Americans were once again booking local soundstages.

How distant the quarrels over continuation letters and Internet compensation now seem, after the UBCP and Hollywood studios resumed bargaining on the West Coast over the Feb. 23 weekend with an eye to a quick deal, and IATSE and AQTIS ended their longstanding turf war in Montreal with an agreement, also on Feb. 23.

‘We already have directors and producers coming to Montreal this week and next, to show them the agreement and to bring business back to town,’ said Hans Fraikin, film commissioner at the Quebec Film and Television Council, after the peace pipe had been handed round in Montreal.

Suddenly, Canada stands on the verge of labor peace, and now it’s the Hollywood studios that face possible disruption from upcoming contract talks with their own unions and guilds.

‘There’s been a 180-degree shift. The instability is in the U.S.,’ says Ron Haney, executive director and CEO of the Directors Guild of Canada.

The ACTRA strike coincided with U.S. pilot season, which prevented potential new shows to take root here with potential for summer shoots. But other shoots that might have considered New Mexico or Louisiana are now sizing up Canada, as the studios scramble to stockpile product to ride out possible SAG and WGA strikes. And the non-union U.S. shoots keep coming here, regardless.

‘We will be the nice stable people to the north,’ says David Zitzerman, an entertainment lawyer with Toronto firm Goodmans, which services U.S. studios and networks shooting in town. He, like many, is daring to ponder a hot 2007 shooting season across Canada.

So who won the ACTRA strike? ACTRA and CFTPA officials will both tell you they came out on top.

What’s clear is the Canadian industry felt the loser, with the U.S. studios, officially just observers in the IPA negotiations, too often driving the process.

That was the case on Feb. 8, when the first tentative deal to end the strike was in sight. In the end, Canadian and U.S. studio reps horse-traded for eight hours behind closed doors over how to monetize new media residuals, only to dash hope for a final agreement when ACTRA rejected the $5.65-a-year buyout offer that emerged that day.

Then, on Feb. 16, the studio reps signed a second apparent deal to end the strike, to the point that CFTPA and ACTRA bargainers shook hands and called for a joint press release.

But that deal also came unglued when the Hollywood studio CEOs exercised an apparent veto against the deal. No one knows which CEOs balked, given the major studios’ ‘all-for-one, one-for-all’ pledge.

But for the Canadians whose industry hung in the balance, it had to be embarrassing.

Setting Internet compensation terms for Canadian actors was always going to be difficult. But the challenge of getting a camel through the eye of a needle was compounded by the animal’s two humps – the interests of U.S. and Canadian producers, which often diverge.

Only after ACTRA and the CFTPA agreed to give the major studios the option to shoot in Canada now and defer payment of new media residuals to 2009 did a deal on a new IPA finally emerge on Feb. 20.

Of course, Canadian producers accept that they don’t play in the U.S. studios’ league when it comes to Internet streaming.

‘Sometimes you sat back and watched and hoped one day you might get to where you’re streaming episodes of [your show, like] 24, and have to decide whether it’s commercial or promotional,’ says a Canadian producer on the CFTPA bargaining team.  

But frustration among Canadian producers over studio intransigence caused some to question whether they needed a new association to represent their interests outside of the CFTPA.

Of course, ACTRA faced divisions of its own, not least fellow Canadian unions and guilds urging both sides to settle as the IPA round dragged on.

The prospect of IATSE Local 667 members threatening to march in the streets to vent their rage over no upcoming U.S. movie shoots helped focus minds to end the strike.

So, as the ACTRA strike fades into the background, much will be forgiven – and even forgotten – as long as the Americans that tried Canada’s patience in recent months shoot here in big numbers over the rest of the year.