OTTAWA – The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) wants the federal government to force Internet broadcasters like Netflix to pay “their fair share when it comes to supporting Canadian culture”.
ACTRA national president Ferne Downey, accompanied by Canadian performers including Sarah Gadon, Benz Antoine, Nigel Bennett, Ellen David, Art Hindle, Shannon Kook, Tristan D. Lalla, Huse Madhavji, Michelle Nolden and Rick Roberts, will attend a reception on Parliament Hill Wednesday evening to ask the new government to support Canada's creative economy.
The organization said that its other strategic priorities for this lobby trip are to ensure that the government delivers on its pre-election commitment to increase funding for the CBC, National Film Board and Telefilm Canada, plus to ask that audiovisual artists be granted the same protections as audio artists when the Copyright Act goes under review in 2017.
“Our first step is to form a strong and positive relationship with our new government,” said Downey, in the news release. “It is crucial in this time of unprecedented change to set policies to assure the survival and ongoing growth of our industry.”
ACTRA represents the interests of 22,000 professional performers working in the English-language recorded media in Canada.
