The clouds may finally be breaking on a bad start to the year for Canadian producers, as they convene at the Westin Ottawa with a sense of vigilance about the direction of the industry.

An ACTRA strike that finally appears to be over – but which may have hurt summer service shoots – and the recent siege at the Canadian Television Fund are preoccupying the 600-or-so producers in Ottawa this week for the CFTPA’s Prime Time 2007 conference, Feb. 21-23. Now more than ever, political leadership is their lobbying cry.

‘The government needs to say this is a desirable industry and will support it,’ says Michael Donovan, cofounder and executive producer at Halifax Film, echoing others in a production sector who feel unheard and unloved by the current Conservative government.

Producers also privately express tremendous frustration with marathon ACTRA-CFTPA/APFTQ negotiations that resembled a B-grade Kabuki dance before reaching a resolution. After a false-start announcement on Friday, Tuesday night both sides declared the arrival of a deal.

Canadian producers partially insulated themselves from these challenges by signing ACTRA continuation letters — allowing them to use ACTRA talent by agreeing to the union’s 5% wage and 2% benefits boost requests — and diversifying away from an embattled Canadian market.

Glen Salzman, CEO of Montreal-based Cineflix, says he depends increasingly on international financing, rather than CTF equity, to get projects off the ground.

‘We only have CTF money in a small percentage of projects. So [CTF instability] is not a huge negative for us,’ he says.

The current direction of production in Canada will become more clear when CFTPA president and CEO Guy Mayson and APFTQ chief Claire Samson unveil annual production volume numbers from the Profile 2007 report on Thursday morning.

Casting light on the state of things, Mayson teases that ‘It is an encouraging Profile that is more optimistic than the past few years. Production in 2005/06 was good.’

With files from Norma Reveler