Photo: The Canadian Press

Compared to Hollywood, Canada's screen industry is tiny. And by all accounts, there are fewer egos, bullies and power-trippers on the scale of Harvey Weinstein within it.

"But of course there's been sexual harassment here. Absolutely. No question," Emmy-nominated Canadian writer-director Patricia Rozema said in a recent interview.

"There are definitely, definitely cases of people who have been systematically sexually harassing young actors, female actors, and getting away with it, and people looking the other way."

Canada's performers' union, ACTRA, has invited industry stakeholders to a closed-door meeting on Thursday to discuss how to implement practical, concrete measures to tackle the issue here in a way that also leads to cultural change.

While sexual misconduct has long been a part of the Canadian industry, it's a problem that seems to be growing, said actress-writer Susan Coyne, co-creator of "Slings and Arrows and screenwriter of the new film "The Man Who Invented Christmas."

For the past year, she's been holding ad-hoc meetings in Toronto living rooms and coffee shops about sexual misconduct in the industry. The latest meeting had about 25 women in attendance.

"What I was hearing from younger actresses is things have gotten worse than when I and my friends, like Martha Burns, were younger and were their age and starting out," said Coyne.

"And I don't understand how that could be. It was so disturbing."

The smallness of Canada's screen industry makes it "almost harder to speak up, because there's just so much less work and we don't have the stars who can lead the charge either," she added.

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Atom Egoyan said ACTRA needs to take "a much firmer stand" going forward.

Jennifer Jonas, producer and owner of New Real Films, said Thursday's industry meeting should address the need for parity and equality on TV and film sets.

"Sexual harassment, I guess you could boil down to being a kind of bullying where the power dynamic is in someone else's favour," said Jonas.

"What I'm happy to be seeing with the #metoo (hashtag) and all the different industry people — both in Canada and the United States — coming out with their statements and everything right now is that people are recognizing that if you make sure there's more gender parity, more diversity, take the power away from the bullies, that things will necessarily and structurally improve."

Writer-director Michael Dowse added that a responsibility also lies with agents in ensuring they don't put their clients "in harm's way."

"Obviously nobody should be doing that thing, but there should be an awareness of reading those situations and avoiding private meetings with directors," said Dowse.

Actor Shawn Doyle, who is a councillor for ACTRA Toronto, insisted the union is taking the situation and this moment in time "very, very seriously."