Interpreter fatigue on film and television sets in Canada is also addressed in a side letter in the new API. Under the new agreement, actors can now, at the end of the working day, flag to a producer that they are too tired to go home, and it is up to the producer to provide the actor with alternative ways to get home. This could include, for example, placing them in a hotel room, offering transportation to a nearby transit stop, or letting them go home by someone else. „Fatigue is a big problem in our sets. Not only when it comes to catastrophic failures, like someone falling asleep behind the wheel or someone falling off a scaffolding, but also that their ability to do their best job will be reduced when they become excessively tired,“ Sparrow said. „This is absolutely a positive step forward in our collaboration to try to reduce the nuisance on our plateaus, to transform the culture on our plateaus into a more respect and less nuisance,“ he added. Among the measures put in place are new provisions that stipulate that auditions can no longer take place in private between a member of the production and an actor or in a hotel room. New provisions are also being introduced near nudity to ensure that it is based on consent and that the actor has an appropriate warning and the opportunity to participate in discussions, Sparrow said. „The positive ground we`ve created in terms of harassment issues and the positive dialogue that has happened on both sides is probably the lasting legacy of this round of contract negotiations and I think it will help advance the culture, as we want to do across the industry,“ Sparrow said.
„The work we`ve done in the industry has even started to go beyond what our [current] contract has talked about, and when we partnered with the CMPA and AQPM, we found that they were very open to discussing changes within the contract that would bring some of these agreements [of the code of conduct],“ he said. Negotiations on the new agreement took place nine days in November between ACTRA, CMPA and AQPM, with 85.8% of ACTA members voting in favour of the new three-year IPA, which will come into force on 1 January 2019. David Sparrow, president of ACTRA National, told playback daily that many of the changes introduced in the new DPI were the result of work done by ACTRA and others in working on the Code of Conduct for Canada`s Creative Industries. ACTRA voted in favour of ratifying a new agreement for independent production (IPA), with the introduction of a series of new measures and provisions relating to the prevention of harassment, language of work and improved protection for tired workers. In addition, the new IPA provides for a 9% increase in rates over the three-year duration of the new agreement, as well as an increase in work opportunities for interpreters by completing the background performer count. . . .