Red tape! I have a vivid childhood recollection of my Government employed Geologist father retiring from his job muttering those very words along with some expletives... For the pseudo environmentally friendly Canadian Government, their border crossing application system is in the Dark Ages... Who the hell has a printer or fax machine anymore and that's the only way they accept the applications! And its six dead tree pages per band!!
The fax machine!! Mine broke years ago... I never bothered replacing it as it became an endless spam bot!! A printer... Why bother, when you can electronically send your files to a print shop and avoid expensive ink cartridges that run out half way through a gig poster...
Email filing cannot be used... Apparently it's not currently covered by the Privacy Act...The PDF you could possibly fill out and save the changes to is a disallowed action....You try to call them and it's a chronic busy signal for hours, then you get referred to a different department... Prepare for redundancy!
The one thing that was accomplished though was a nice gent in the third department I was referred to did supply me with my official No Bollocks Events Canada Revenue Agency nine digit business number so I can legally payroll out of country performers...
Revenue Canada and Service Canada, which handles border crossing are different departments... This is where the clusterfuck begins and NO! the red-tapers don't talk to each other... The paperwork between paying an out of country band requires similar yet just a couple of different facts than the border crossing paperwork... What I don't understand is why these departments are not streamlined to have their paperwork mesh... It seems like a colossal time waster for both Service Canada, Revenue Canada and you, the talent buyer...
I guess we are bolstering the economy by having to own a fax machine and a printer in this electronic day and age, just to get bands into Canada to play ... When I critically questioned the process, I was told to contact my MLA....
I learnt a lot of interesting tidbits during this 3 day debacle...Did you know the minimum a band member coming to Canada can make is $22.50 per hour! A tour manager needs to be making 29 bux an hour and needs their own six page LMO [Labor Market Opinion]! The border peeps want to know what city someone is living in and their citizenship while the revenue peeps don't fucking care... The border peeps also made me go get a Civic Business Licence... I am now an official 'band coordinator' in the City of Vancouver! That was the only City title I could get that didn't require a police background check... If I had claimed I was a booking agent, it's a different story! Things that make you go hmmmmmm!!!
Facebook cracks me up... I just saw a meme today that stated something to the effect about the ''there's no scene whiners'' in bands who leave a show after their set... I've always wondered why bands do that... I've also seen this in reverse where the headliner doesn't even show up until their time slot after loadin.... I can understand if a couple of peeps have to work early or if they're underage but the whole band leaving for no reason is just weird! I have a section in my door float wallet with unclaimed band pay... I think I'm going to start dating it and set an expiry period after which it goes to the "working poor promoter bummed ciggies replacement fund!!"
Here's a redundancy! Support your local scene! See you at the shows!
- wendythirteen
