“The only option is often Air Canada”: turbulence filming at N.-B.

Members of the New Brunswick audiovisual industry are already feeling the effects of Air Canada strike. In a region where this air carrier is very present, the filming of certain television and documentary series are shaken.

For example, the director and producer André Roy was to go to Poland on Saturday for the filming of a documentary on a neo-Brunswick. chess player participating in the World Individual Chess Championship in Rzeszow.

The day before, he was at the 1755 show in Dieppe to celebrate the National Day of Acadia, when he received the bad news.

I received an opinion which told me that Air Canada was going to suspend all our flights to go and return, but that they were going to endeavor to find an exchange flight, with their 120 other airlines to which they have accesshe said.

André Roy finally received another text, 20 minutes later, notifying that no possible route had been found for the departure.

The production team immediately communicated with its travel agency to find a plan B. Unfortunately, the options were not conclusive; Either they arrived late to attend the event on Polish soil, or the flight was overpriced.

When you buy plane tickets at the last minute, it was four times the price we had paid, just for one gosaid André Roy. We had to arrive at the conclusion of saying that it was not possible to arrive to make this shoot.

This is where I realize that in eastern Canada, we are very little served by other airlines […] Our only option is often just Air Canada.

André Roy says that the incident made him realize how Air Canada has a kind of supply of the offer in the region.

There is only one company with which we can do business and when a work conflict arrives like that, well we are left alone, it is even more difficult and it is there that we feel that we are really far from the big centers like Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, who could have other optionshe explains.

Filming delay

The situation is problematic for the entire logistics of the production team.

It’s been several weeks that we were in contact with the organizers [du tournoi]we had had special arrangements to be able to shoot, we had teams waiting for ussaid André Roy. We have to rethink the scenario, we have to rethink how we go, then how we are going to do, depending on this strike.

For filming, there are people who were committed that we had to tell them that ultimately the contract, we will not be able to honor it, for reasons out of our controlhe continues.

The production team also had to cancel many hotel and transport reservations. She now wants a total refund and their travel agency is looking at the Air Canada clauses.

We are unable to confirm whether these expenses are completely reimbursablesaid André Roy.

Long wait for a refund

The director and director of photography in the film and television industry, Gilles Doiron, also experienced the turbulence of the Air Canada strike this weekend.

He and his team were in the midst of the 2nd season of the documentary series Festival in the village, in Le Goulet, in the Acadian peninsula.

One of the team members was absolutely to leave the province and return to Quebec for another shoot on Monday.

We expected to have a flight after our filming wrap on Monday morning to be able to go to Montreal [en avion]he said. We had to improvise, a crumb. […] We took the road to go to Montreal.

If the consequences of the strike have been a little less disastrous on the set of Gilles Doiron, the fact remains that its current level of exasperation towards Air Canada is very high: it has already been waiting for months a reimbursement of travel for another flight canceled.

With his production team, he went to Houston last year, with Air Canada. Due to a unforeseen maintenancethe flight was 4 p.m. late.

We missed a day of shooting for thatrecalls Gilles Doiron. These are tens of thousands of lost dollars. I needed to make a request to be reimbursed.

He has now been waiting for his reimbursement for eleven months and hopes that the Air Canada strike will not have additional repercussions on the industry.

The union continues the strike

At the same time, negotiations between Air Canada and its 10,000 on -board agents remain on the tightrope.

For the second time in two days, Air Canada on -board agents and their union have chosen to challenge a prescription from the Canadian Industrial Relations Council and to continue the strike, now qualified illegal.

The Canadian Public Service union invokes the constitutional right to strike.

At a press conference in the early afternoon on Monday, the union said it intended to continue its pressure means.

The Labor Code provides maximum fines of $ 1,000 per day of infringement for employees and $ 100,000 per day of infringement for the union.

With information from Ghislain Couture