Canadian entertainment unions and guilds are banding together to face bitter challenges, with a lucrative industry on the line.

‘Everyone in the industry knows what we need to survive and flourish,’ says Ron Haney, CEO and executive director of the Directors Guild of Canada’s Ontario branch. He is talking about sometime foes uniting to survive a crisis. But the question becomes: which crisis?

The pending bust in service production from a soaring loonie has been offset in the short term by a mini-boom across Canada. The temporary surge was prompted by Hollywood’s scramble to get as many pictures in the can as possible in anticipation of the writers strike in the U.S.

Looking past the temporary gold rush, however, unions and guilds are trying to align themselves on a large number of files.

Key topics of discussion include hiking tax credits further to offset the rising dollar; securing a future for the Canadian Television Fund; intervening in the CRTC broadcast licence renewal hearings involving the likes of CTV and Global, and having a voice in CRTC decisions about the future ownership of Canadian airwaves (see story p. 26); and negotiating terms of trade agreements between the producers and broadcasters.

‘We need their help, the three above-the-line guilds,’ says John Barrack, CFTPA VP, quickly adding that the producers association is still working with ACTRA.

Barrack says that unless players who have previously been at odds bury their differences and play for the same team, ‘then it will be goodnight nurse for Canadian production’ in late 2008 or early 2009.

The need to project unity between the CFTPA and ACTRA first became apparent last February after the Canadian actors strike was resolved, and another crisis appeared among some disgruntled Canadian Television Fund contributors.

CFTPA’s Barrack and ACTRA national executive director Stephen Waddell had not formally inked a new labor pact, but they nonetheless put their organizations’ names on a joint letter from the Canadian Film and Television Industry Committee to protest Shaw Communications and Videotron pulling their multimillion-dollar monthly CTF payments.

They also swiveled their guns at a perceived common enemy: broadcasters and carriers intent on degrading the Broadcasting Act.

‘We are working together,’ says Waddell. ‘We’re not hand-in-hand, but we have the same objectives in trying to increase the amount of licence fees,’ he says of ongoing joint lobbying by ACTRA and the CFTPA to get more money into independent production.

Meanwhile, Canadian broadcasters and BDUs have provided a blessing in disguise for CFTIC participants.

‘The fact is, CanWest Global and Shaw cause us problems, but they also help the guilds to come together,’ says DGC general counsel and director of regulatory affairs Monique Lafontaine.

CFTIC is only one of a number of coalition groups that enable policy wags for Canadian entertainment unions and guilds to find common ground on which to fight industry battles.

Others include the Coalition of Canadian Audio-Visual Unions (an umbrella group including ACTRA, the Writers Guild of Canada, the DGC and NABET) and provincial film promotion agencies like FilmOntario.

Each coalition group enables guilds and unions to discuss key issues in private, and judge how close or far apart they are, before everyone settles on a single voice and issues a public call for action.

At the moment, Canada’s production industry is cashing in on labor woes in Hollywood, and next spring ACTRA’s Los Angeles counterpart (SAG) will be digging in for its own talks with Hollywood studios.