Although ACTRA (the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists) has been entrenched in the Canadian recorded media industries for 80 years, it must remain constantly vigilant on behalf of its performer members.

Even longtime deals are vulnerable, as with the collective National Commercial Agreement (NCA), which has existed in various forms for more than 60 years but is in need of re-upping.

ACTRA renewed its NCA with the Association of Canadian Advertisers earlier this month but remains engaged in what it describes as a “lockout” of its performers by signatory advertising, marketing, media and PR firms represented by the Institute of Canadian Agencies (ICA), with which negotiations broke down last  year.

“We are continuing this battle and we will persevere and come out on top,” ACTRA National president Eleanor Noble (pictured above, wearing a white coat) tells Playback. “As we love to say, ‘We’re easy to work with but we’re hard to fight.'”

Although the media landscape has dramatically evolved since ACTRA’s inception, such disputes have played a role in shaping the performers’ union into the organization it is today.

Such was the case back in 1961, when it was known as the Canadian Council of Authors and Artists (CCAA) and included radio and TV writers. A disagreement between the CAA’s Toronto branch and other centres over commercial work led to an organizational overhaul and the emergence of ACTRA two years later, then known as the Association of Canadian Television and Radio Artists.

The country’s fledgling movie industry was soon addressed through collective agreements with the National Film Board of Canada and independent prodcos. (ACTRA  incorporated the cinema sector in its name in 1984, also changing “Association” to “Alliance.”) A new deal was also reached around this time with CBC, which had been the nation’s dominant media player starting with its locally written, acted and produced radio entertainment programs dating back to 1936.

Performers in those days worked long hours and wore many hats, yet might only be paid around $15 (about $300 in today’s dollars) per show, according to ACTRA estimates. They could record a block of radio commercials and be compensated only $0.50 (worth $10 today) apiece, even if the spots ran for years.

Seeking improved pay and working conditions, performers in Toronto banded together in 1941 to form the union-like Radio Artists of Toronto Society (RATS), which was  followed by the Radio Artists of Montreal Society (RAMS).

In 1943 a national coalition was formed when RATS and RAMS joined with like-minded groups in Vancouver and Winnipeg. The name was changed to the Association of Canadian Radio Artists (ACRA), an affiliation was forged with the American Federation of Labour (AFL) and the first collective agreement covering radio work was reached within a couple of years.

When CBC launched its TV network in 1952, ACRA talent was front and centre. Performers believed a new approach was needed for this new era, and so ACRA left the AFL, merged with the francophone Union des Artistes (UDA) and took on the CCAA moniker.

Conflict arose later in the decade when the French contingent supported a producers’ strike against CBC/Radio-Canada while the English did not, leading to the UDA’s departure from the CCAA in 1959.

In the days when the union negotiated directly with CBC, the two organizations were often at loggerheads, but today, Noble assures, “We have good relationships and are doing well with CBC creating Canadian stories with Canadian producers, directors, and performers that people want to watch around the world.”

Today, the union’s bargaining partners for film, television and digital media are the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA) and Association Québécoise de la Production Médiatique, which negotiate jointly. The Independent Production Agreement (IPA) establishes the terms, conditions and rates for Canadian performers, excluding B.C. and Yukon.

The current IPA is good through the end of 2024. With cameras rolling nationwide – CMPA’s Profile 2022 said Canada’s production volume was a record $11.7 billion – Noble says, “the state of the industry is pretty good.”

So while ACTRA will pursue the best possible terms for its members in the next round of IPA talks, she adds, “We are also always after safety protections on set. We’re looking for respect and dignity [for all performers].”

The union has made significant gains in this area, particularly regarding child performers. Ontario’s Protecting Child Performers Act became law in 2016 after years of lobbying by ACTRA Toronto and the Canadian Actors’ Equity Association, which represents live performers. The act ensures minors have some of their income put in trust, that their education is maintained, and that they have parental supervision.

“It regulates not just unionized performers, but all children working in the performing arts in Ontario,” says ACTRA National treasurer and past ACTRA Toronto president Theresa Tova (pictured far left), who had been working towards this goal since the 1990s. “The government has used our language. We created the template and they ran with it.”

ACTRA Toronto is also behind the Association of Acting Coaches and Educators, created in the wake of the #MeToo movement to help bring oversight and best practices to the sector for students and parents. It recently held a conference focusing on interacting with young performers, teaching skills and gender diversity and inclusion.

In its negotiations over the NCA, ACTRA has accused the ICA of trying to cut rates and end retirement contributions and a benefit plan for its members who perform in TV, radio and digital advertising. It has also said the ICA is seeking the freedom to use union or non-union talent as it desires.

For its part, the ICA says ACTRA has rejected or not responded to proposed scenarios including one that would see a pay raise for its members and another in which unionized talent would get all the work.

ACTRA called for a boycott of brands it says have commissioned non-union ads, including McDonald’s and Walmart, and its efforts seem to be paying off. Marketing and communications giant Cossette – which counts McDonald’s and Walmart among its clientele – subsequently signed a letter of continuance this past April, honouring the agreement that was in place for the rest of 2023.

Another hot-button issue has been the lack of proper training and materials for hair and makeup artists working with performers who are Black, Indigenous and people of colour. ACTRA filed a grievance against the producer groups and arbitration led to a settlement last week.

The union’s efforts to level the playing field for visible minorities can be traced back to the 1990 launch of its catalogue promoting diverse talent, Into the Mainstream. (The database for all ACTRA members has since migrated to ACTRAonline.ca, with a special section for diverse performers.)

The initiative was led by the late Sandi Ross, ACTRA Toronto’s first woman and person of colour to serve as president. Jean Yoon, an ACTRA Toronto Award winner for her role as family matriarch Umma on CBC’s Kim’s Convenience (Thunderbird Entertainment), regards Ross’ work as impactful. Yoon has long been involved in helping foster opportunity for people of colour, starting in theatre.

“I avoided film and television out of anxiety of having to deal with systemic racism,” she recalls. “But with Sandi’s advocacy, I felt confident to move forward. That was my first contact with ACTRA, and as I became more successful in film and television, I became more involved through their professional development workshops, which are important in deepening our membership’s skill level and building cohesion in the union.”

Yoon (pictured far right) later sat on the ACTRA Toronto Council and in 2020 was given the branch’s Award of Excellence, recognizing both her body of work and union activity. Union branches can also be found in Vancouver, Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Montreal, Dartmouth, N.S., (representing the Maritimes) and St. John’s.

ACTRA National’s relationship with B.C. has a particularly rocky history. In the early 1990s, when powerhouse Hollywood creator Stephen J. Cannell was turning Vancouver into a hotbed of U.S. TV production with the likes of 21 Jump Street, local performers voted to establish the Union of B.C. Performers (UBCP) apart from ACTRA.

“We were frustrated as we didn’t feel listened to,” recalls Keith Martin Gordey, who back then sat on the ACTRA BC council and is current ACTRA National VP.

“Cannell coincidentally realized the IPA wasn’t enforceable in B.C., because labour law is a provincial matter and ACTRA was not a union in the province,” Gordey  continues. “He said, ‘I’m not signing it,’ concurrent with our dissatisfaction. Things got political and a bunch of us got together and created our own union and the British Columbia Master Production Agreement.”

In 1994, UBCP joined the U.S.-based trade union Teamsters, which used its foothold in Canada to try to muscle in on ACTRA’s turf elsewhere. After a couple of years of conflict, B.C. lawyer Stephen Kelleher mediated a settlement that saw UBCP become ACTRA’s B.C. branch.

“It makes a lot of sense to have a national organization that functions well, because you’re better off with greater numbers of people working together,” says Gordey, who also served as UBCP/ACTRA president. “ACTRA’s structure had to change and it became an assembly of autonomous branches.”

Over the years ACTRA’s national executive directors have negotiated alongside UBCP/ACTRA in bargaining with Hollywood and local producers, as was the case with Marie Kelly, who currently holds that title and participated in talks for the British Columbia Master Animation Agreement.

Also seeking autonomy were ACTRA’s screenwriting members, who formed the Writers Guild of Canada (WGC) as a separate organization within the alliance in 1991, finally becoming independent four years later. They both partake in the ACTRA Fraternal Benefit Society (AFBS), incorporated in 1975.

A Canadian artist’s career is a fraught one. ACTRA says its 28,000 nationwide members earn on average less than $6,000 per year from performing, and so the AFBS looks to help with insurance and ever-important health-care benefits and retirement plan programs for ACTRA and WGC members.

ACTRA has learned over the years to use its members’ skill sets to its lobbying advantage. A watershed moment came in 2003 when notable actors including Paul Gross, Sonja Smits, Rick Mercer and Wendy Crewson travelled to Parliament Hill to ask the feds to reinstate money cut from the Canadian Television Fund.

“It’s so much more effective when you have an organization behind you,” Crewson says. “You’re all on message and you get the meetings with MPs. We did lobby work for a couple of years and that’s when I really saw the strength of the union.”

Crewson (pictured left) had been living in California and appeared in Hollywood blockbusters such as Air Force One (1997), but moved back to Toronto, where she has had an award-winning run in Canadian series and TV movies. She received the ACTRA Toronto Award of Excellence in 2007.

At that moment, she recalls, “I decided that while I was at home most of the time, I could run for ACTRA council and really be part of it day to day.”

She remains active, and just last year was on a picket line on behalf of commercial performers in the NCA dispute. “For many of those performers, that work is a stepping stone into other things in the industry,” she notes. “They need to know the entire union is behind them.”

That’s the kind of unity Noble is proud to see. The national president is also pleased with ACTRA’s efforts on Bill C-11 – which gets international streamers to contribute to the Canadian system as local broadcasters do, and which became law in April – and how it has navigated the challenging past few years.

“We overcame COVID-19 and kept work going across the country,” Noble says. “We lobbied at the government level to make sure that performers who were not working were compensated for that time, when the government wanted a clawback on it. We fought again and we won that again.”

So while there is always a new obstacle to overcome, she says, “we will always fight to protect our members.”

This is an expanded version of a story that originally appeared in Playback’s Spring 2023 issue

Most photos courtesy of ACTRA except: CBC farm family radio drama The Craigs, which aired in the 1940s and 1950s – courtesy of CBC; and jazz performer Eleanor Collins sings in the CBC TV studio in 1955 – courtesy of Eleanor Collins’s personal collection.