The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Arts’ 60th anniversary in 2003 marked a distinct change in direction for the performers union, as it reorganized to address new challenges facing its 21,000 members in an increasingly uncertain domestic production industry.

Throughout the early ’90s, ACTRA was focused on internal struggles, primarily among performers in British Columbia, which culminated in 1996 when the Union of British Columbia Performers dropped its affiliation with the Teamsters and became a branch of ACTRA national. Since then, ACTRA branches across Canada have gained increasing solidarity and focused their collective efforts on national issues.

‘The ACTRAs of the country had to unite, or not move forward,’ says ACTRA Toronto president Richard Hardacre. ‘In the last year, we were handed the crisis of Canadian production disappearing, and it is unfortunate, but that crisis actually gelled us together.’

Moving into the new millennium, Hardacre says the union has matured dramatically and effectively restructured to transform ACTRA into a strong lobbying force focused on public policy reform.

The performers union is now in year three of the ACTRA Plan, a five-year business strategy that restructured objectives into three areas: bargaining, which includes negotiating collective agreements; organizing, to ensure production is conducted according to union contracts; and services to members, which covers a large area including communications and public policy.

Although the most profound changes at ACTRA have occurred in the last two years, it was the CRTC’s 1999 Television Policy that inspired the union to start shifting its focus to lobbying and public policy.

‘The industry was blossoming, new opportunities were emerging, then we identify the 1999 CRTC decision as disastrous,’ says national president Thor Bishopric. ‘ACTRA did intervene at that time, but we didn’t have the kind of resources that we have today and our brief, unfortunately, didn’t stack up against the multimillion-dollar campaign that was undertaken by broadcast interests. Once that policy was in place, we immediately saw a decline in Canadian drama and a race towards cheaper forms of programming.’

It was in March 2003, after the federal government’s annual Canadian Television Fund contribution was cut by $25 million and SARS hysteria drove foreign producers out of Toronto, that many Canadian performers became acutely aware of just how bad the situation for domestic programming was, a realization that forced the organization to step up its public policy advocacy.

Strident efforts

‘Our lobbying efforts, which had been quite low key for a year prior, suddenly became quite strident,’ explains Hardacre.

Within two months, a team of ACTRA’s most recognizable talents was in Ottawa calling on the federal government and the CRTC to ‘save’ Canadian dramatic programming. ACTRA members met with Paul Martin, who committed to restoring CTF funds when he took over as prime minister, a commitment ACTRA is confident will be honored.

A month later, advocacy was at the core of an ACTRA members’ conference. Hardacre credits a keynote speech by Paul Gross for inspiring the resulting lobbying efforts. In October, ACTRA held another lobby day in Ottawa urging the federal government to restore and enhance the CTF, again receiving assurances from the Martin camp that the fund would be restored to $100 million.

‘We’ve really moved in a year and a half,’ Hardacre continues. ‘Two years ago, this wasn’t even a blue-sky dream of ours. Since 2002, we’ve put ourselves on the national map through our lobbying efforts.’

According to ACTRA national executive director Stephen Waddell, the union’s policy agenda for 2004 is its primary focus going forward. Seeing an increase in CTF funds and lobbying the government to give the CRTC direction with respect to the drama issue will be the key objectives in the coming year.

‘Canadian culture is in peril, and the situation will only get worse unless the government takes some drastic action now,’ says Waddell. ‘The CRTC must reinstate the expenditure and content requirements for drama, because the experiment of 1999 is not working and we can’t wait for licences to be renewed in 2007, or 2008, because there will not be a production community left and there will not be Canadian performers available.’

In order to bolster its advocacy efforts, ACTRA has joined forces with the Writers Guild of Canada, the Directors Guild of Canada, IATSE and NABET to form the Canadian Coalition of Audio-visual Unions to facilitate joint lobbying on the federal level.

ACTRA has two more lobby days in the works for 2004. Waddell says the first will likely occur sometime in the next month and a half, just before or just after the expected federal budget, with the second set to coincide with the call for a federal election. In addition, ACTRA will be pushing for more representatives

sitting in positions of power on

regulatory and policy-making bodies such as CTF.

Waddell, Bishopric and Hardacre agree that decisions made in the coming year will be pivotal.

‘We now have to engage and ensure that the government and industry remain committed to preserving our cultural institutions and voices in this country,’ says Bishopric. ‘Without these supports I’m afraid it’s a losing battle.’

Meanwhile, regional branches are also coming up with unique initiatives to encourage indigenous production. For example, ACTRA Toronto has started the Toronto Indie Program, which allows low-budget, fully Canadian independent projects to use ACTRA cast members at a reduced rate, and has already created more than 900 acting jobs. The program has seen the creation of 60 TIP projects, nine features and 51 shorts, including The Truth About Head, a 12-minute film from Toronto filmmaker Dale Heslip that had its world premiere at Cannes 2003 and came home with the award for best short film.

There have been some recent changes in leadership at ACTRA. An executive was elected at a national council meeting held over the

weekend of Feb. 1. The new national executive includes Rob Morton in British Columbia, Linda Kupecek

in Alberta, Wayne Nicklas

in Saskatchewan/Manitoba, Ferne Downey and Richard Hardacre in Toronto, Tyrone Benskin in Montreal/Ottawa and Ruth Lawrence in Newfoundland/ Maritimes. Wayne Nicklas was also elected national VP and Ferne Downey treasurer.

-www.actra.ca