The ACTRA-CFTPA talks are back on track, with prompting from Ottawa.

Federal Minister of Labor Jean-Pierre Blackburn has called both sides back to the bargaining table on Wednesday and Thursday in Toronto and has named Elizabeth MacPherson, director general of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services, as mediator.

"In my view, the continued production of Canadian films and television programs is too important to Canada and to the Canadian economy to be jeopardized by your current dispute," Blackburn said Friday in a statement.

This week's talks will include ACTRA, American producers, the CFTPA and Quebec producers represented by the APFTQ.

The actors still insist the issue of new media compensation for performers should be pushed to a joint committee for separate discussion.

"We think this deal could be done in 10 minutes, as long as we push [new media residuals] into a sidebar," said Brian Topp, executive director of ACTRA's Toronto branch, as his union held a rally Friday outside the CFTPA offices in Toronto.

Five floors up, the CFTPA's brain trust plotted strategy for next week's talks as around 200 actors, backed by bullhorns and placards, paraded outside.

John Barrack, the CFTPA's chief negotiator, reiterated that determining residuals for new media performances had to be part of a new IPA deal. Canadian and American producers require the digital rights to performances before they can screen or sell Canadian-shot product on the world market.

"If each of us holds to our positions, they're right, there'll be no deal," Barrack said in answer to ACTRA's defiant stand below his office window.

Meanwhile, American producers came away empty-handed from separate talks this week in Vancouver with the Union of British Columbia Performers.

It is understood that the UBCP held firm on the issue of new media rights, preferring to look east to the ACTRA talks for direction on where next to move on the issue.

American studio reps will now be looking to a deal with ACTRA for leverage when the thorny issue of new media residuals comes up in their own forthcoming contract talks with U.S. guilds, including the Screen Actors Guild.