Lost in the lights

>> ACTRA accuses Immigration Canada of selling Canadian actors short

By GEORGE MADDUX

The kiddie baseball game held in Pointe-Claire might have just been a make-believe match-up, but Gary Sax thinks what happened on the field that day was a clear case of corporations caught stealing.

Sax, a representative of the ACTRA union of 16,000 Canadian actors, has been arguing that Immigration Canada should punish General Electric and four other companies $25,000 each for what happened at that West Island field of dreams on the afternoon of Sept. 13.

The replay of the incident won't be hard to see, as it will hit the airwaves some day soon as an advertisement for an American Internet service called GE Global Exchange. In the ad, five women sit in the stands and praise an adult male for showing up to watch his son's game. The problem is that the female actors had no legal permission to work in Canada and took acting jobs away from Canadians, according to Sax.

Foreign productions that use American actors must first negotiate with ACTRA, which then advises Human Resources Canada whether or not to issue work permits for foreign actors. "We try to get as many of the roles for Canadian talent. If there are big stars cast in the lead, we ask that the rest of the roles go to Canadians," says Sax.

ACTRA says that upon their recommendation, Human Resources Canada refused work permits for the bit parts, yet the cameras rolled nonetheless. On the day of the filming, police, ACTRA officials and the Immigration officials rushed to the scene, only to be informed that the illegal actors had already left the country.

After a brief inquiry, Immigration officials decided it would be impossible to lay charges as the miscreants had already left Canada. They have written letters of warning to the companies involved, a New-York-based ad agency called BBDO, HKM Productions from Los Angeles, Industry Films of Toronto and General Electric.

And although the actors in the commercial might hope to one day be big stars, uncertainty about their real identities worked to their advantage this time. "A person associated with the production provided us with five names and five dates of birth and this is all the information that we had about the actors at that time," says Robert Gervais of Immigration Canada. He says more information is required to pursue the case. And even then, "the sanction for working without a work permit is the penalty of being deported from Canada. This is not a criminal case," he says.

Gervais says the names of the women actors and their dates of birth have been sent to Customs and Immigration officials who will keep an eye out for them at the border in case they try to return. Meanwhile, the companies involved in the apparent infraction will no longer be able to claim ignorance of the law because they have received a written warning from Immigration Canada.

But Sax feels Immigration Canada is booting the ball by not hustling to fine the companies in question. "Their attitude makes it dangerous not just for us [ACTRA] but for other industries. Why bother going through the rigmarole of applying for papers when you can just cross the border and take jobs away from Canadians?"

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