With the strike against the American commercial industry no closer to a resolution, the conflict continues to affect Canadian commercial production.

The Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists have been on strike since May 1. With no return to the negotiation table in sight – and with escalating actions on both sides of the fence – Canada’s actra, which has a reciprocal agreement with the two u.s. labor groups, says it must be vigilant not to let struck work take refuge in Canada.

As promised, actra has instituted a process to determine whether any reverse-snowbirds are here only to avoid the strike.

‘We have a system we’ve established with sag and aftra where they’re sending us lists of companies who are signatory to their interim agreement,’ says Stephen Waddell, national executive director of actra. ‘We get that on a daily basis. Then, with respect to any production coming to Canada, we look at the production and we determine whether the company is an existing actra signatory or whether it’s a new company to us. We’re looking at those kinds of variables to determine whether or not we think it is struck work. We ask them, as well, ‘Is this struck work?’ We also ask them if they’re willing to sign the sag or aftra interim agreements,’ Waddell adds.

In the meantime, Waddell has noted no increase in Canadian commercial production. He explains: ‘We just had a conference call of all our staff across the country and there hasn’t been, at this point, any substantial increase.’

Greg Krizman, spokesman for sag in Los Angeles concurs. ‘Honestly, we really haven’t [noticed productions coming to Canada to avoid the strike]. I think actra has already forced one company that wanted to do a commercial up there to sign an interim agreement,’ Krizman says.

At aftra, spokesman Dick Moore cites the reciprocal agreements as being effective in preventing struck work from leaving the u.s.

‘They can’t film in Canada [because of reciprocal agreements],’ Moore begins. ‘And that is also the case in every other performing union in the United States and in Europe and in Mexico. We’ve had extremely strong support from foreign performing unions and it has been very effective,’ Moore concludes.