Greetings!
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, Equity has been working to keep the membership up-to-date on issues of importance, including production cancellation and contract termination interpretations, advocacy initiatives and available information on government programs that would benefit you.
Today, we want to tell you what Equity is doing internally to manage its own operations during this pandemic.
Early in March, senior staff began the development of an emergency plan should the situation in Canada escalate. On March 17, following a herculean effort to assess and update laptops and home computers for a core group of key employees, to protect our staff and respond to provincial emergency orders, we shut the physical National and Western offices. Equity has been operating virtually since our first membership meeting via Zoom.
Almost immediately thereafter, decisions were made on how best to continue to offer services to the members at a time when Equity, like all of you, is receiving no income. Our entire source of revenue is dues. We receive no government grants of any kind and only some moderate interest on investments. We estimate that revenues are down $250K for each month of the shutdown.
Over 20 years ago, a very concerned (and visionary) group of Councillors and staff determined that Equity should establish a "stabilization" fund, a piggy bank of sorts that could be relied on in times of trouble. Thanks to that foresight, Equity will be able to maintain basic member services throughout the period of physical distancing and industry shutdown, as well during the unknown amount of time it will take to rebuild the live performance sector.
However, we have no intention of emptying that piggybank. That would be irresponsible. We have now completed a comprehensive overhaul of our planned budget to match the financial reality in our industry imposed by the pandemic. We have pared expenses to the bone but even this is not enough. Therefore, we want to let you know that there have been staff layoffs and that the remaining Equity staff will see a reduction in salary and benefits for at least six months and longer if necessary. As a result of managing these reductions, members may find that all remaining staff will not be available to you five days a week.
Council is also taking measures to be financially responsible, while continuing to work on your behalf during these difficult times: Council meetings will be moving to an online format for its June meeting, and possibly beyond, some of its newer projects will be postponed, etc. as work on other initiatives, such as the Mental Health and Senior Artist surveys, continues.
While we are hoping to take advantage of the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy, a salary benefit offered by the Federal Government as a way to reduce our reliance on our stabilization fund, it is likely that the layoffs will be permanent as we do not foresee a return to previous production levels for some time.
Our primary focus is to be available to the membership and the engagers as everyone unwinds their current productions and to be here to provide contract assistance when production ramps up again. Our second priority is advocacy, ensuring that the live performance sector is well accounted for in federal and provincial creative industry rebuilding programs.
Our online membership meetings via Zoom will continue every other week for the next month or two,
or as long as we have new or important information and support to offer. If you miss a meeting, a video recording and transcript are posted as soon as possible after the meeting. As well, we will provide information by either EQUIFLASH or by direct email, so
please make sure that we have your current email address on file
. If you or someone you know is not enrolled to receive EQUIFLASH, please encourage them to
sign up
.
Lastly, we urge you all to listen to your local authorities with respect to requirements for physical distancing or sheltering in place. The more cooperative we all are with these requirements now, the sooner we will all be able to resume our regular lives and work. The arts are essential to our quality of life and we see many people turning to the arts for entertainment and solace during this extraordinary time in our history. It gives us hope that this experience will create greater recognition of the importance of the arts in society, resulting in a renewed vigour for our sector when we are able to gather together again.
Please stay safe and healthy.