Thank you for the question.
It's been a bit of a strange year for the IATSE because, as everyone has said, there is going to be a real issue with retaining crew. I can tell you we were doing okay until the fall of 2021. Things were starting to reopen a little bit. There was a sense of optimism. And then the what I'll call “double whammy” of omicron and the termination of the CRB had a dramatic and devastating impact on the industry. The mental well-being of my members, of people who work in the industry, was really at an all-time low. I had never seen it before. We have rolled out programs to address mental health and well-being. I had never seen that level of despair. Usually around Christmas it's a time for a lot of employment in the industry. The timing of it was truly devastating.
We've had a bit of a rescue, in the sense that we're seeing record employment. The IATSE looks after people in not only live performance but also motion picture and television production. In 2021, we saw record numbers in terms of work. A number of our stage members moved over to film and television production, and, quite frankly, many of them are not coming back. That's just the nature of the beast. I think Alex and others commented about people finding other industries to work in. That's one of the concerns we have going forward.
In terms of other countries, when we look at the insurance—and we did this in Canada. We did it for the domestic film industry when there was an issue about coming back to work. The U.S. studios didn't need it, but the Canadian producers did—we created this elaborate plan to support domestic film producers in terms of COVID-style insurance to financially support it. It was greatly used. It was a great program. It brought the domestic industry back. That's what we were looking at.
There was a lot of press about Come From Away shutting down. I'm equally concerned about the Harry Potter production that's going to come into Toronto. It takes a $25-million investment to get that thing on the road. That is a major investment. Without any kind of financial support, it is very difficult for a producer to make the decision to put that show on knowing that it could come crumbling down if all of a sudden there's a 50% reduction. That's the notion of an insurance plan: to enable, to incentivize producers, and to go forward with their plans knowing there is some form of support. That's where I think we have fallen behind where other countries, particularly the U.K. and Australia, have led. Again, for Come From Away, we're the only country where it shut down. It continued to be produced in the United States. It continued to be produced in Australia and the U.K. It was just Canada. That was sort of ironic given the nature of the story. But we need to be bold here. We need to be bold and to move forward.