My colleagues may wish to comment as well.
As you know, I'm an actor and I base my work in Toronto now. I trained at the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal, and I started my career in Montreal.
I'll give you a personal example. When I moved to Toronto in the late 1970s and started getting my first work in Ontario and outside of Quebec, there was a casting department at the CBC. It was very efficient and professional, with a head of casting and about six casting directors. They had a remarkable thing—a talent library that the CBC had put together over generations. They weren't just seeing the icons of Canadian television like Don Harron and Catherine McKinnon; they were seeing thousands of actors, not just from Toronto. The casting department spread its work across the country because there was real production being done by the CBC. This was from 1977 into the late 1980s. Cuts have occurred since about 1990, and that casting department completely disappeared in the 1980s.
I learned yesterday from my friend Raoul that CBC has reinvigorated a single-person casting advisor for productions they are co-producing or commissioning. That's really heartening. It's great news that once again there is a reason for actors to go into a CBC building on spec.
Ms. Keeper mentioned Manitoba. Hundreds of our members in Manitoba used to rely on CBC radio and television. I think CBC radio is one of the healthiest indications of what can be done for our culture in both languages in this country. CBC radio is relatively unscathed; it is the television that has been eviscerated.
ACTRA is a national federation of branches, and we have a branch in Edmonton, Alberta. That branch was formed specifically to protect the interests and cover the collective bargaining interests of our members in Edmonton. In the 1960s their only work in Edmonton was for the CBC, and that branch has now closed. ACTRA's national council had to choose in January of this year to close that branch, and 130 members in that branch no longer have an administrative centre. They have to rely on Calgary's office to handle their work, because there is no Canadian indigenous or any kind of CBC work in Edmonton. The work that happens in Edmonton is service production that depends on the fluctuation of the Canadian dollar. If it's a little bit high, there is no service production coming from the United States into the prairies and the west. We all know that the Alberta government is the one government in the country that doesn't have provincial tax credits toward film production.
So that's one indication of what the cuts have done over the last 15 years to the CBC. Actual casting advice from the CBC is not happening, and no one is getting a job directly from a CBC production. It works otherwise now.
I don't know if my colleagues have anything to say or add to that.