If something in Canada is good, it should not need subsidization. That includes films, online sites such as this one, and milk, chicken and eggs. Once subsidiation starts, it grows an industry around it collecting government (our) mony. Just stop it!
"How you gonna keep them down on the farm after they've seen Paris?" American popular entertainment has sweep the world because the world finds it attractive. I know this will offend and upset some Canadians but Canadian culture is but a pale reproduction of American culture. It's like Ketchup, the posh would never put it on the table but it is the number one condiment in the world.
"Canadian culture is but a pale reproduction of American culture". The fruits of official multiculturalism, the post-national state, and seeing "culture" as a financial gravy train from government.
And Survivor 50 is on!!! American network television is unwatchable drivel. The is no question that some of what the streaming services have come up with is brilliant. The networks offer sports.
And that includes all forms of investment - because subsidizing a rate of return by only taxing half a capital gain (or zero in the case of principal residences) is just goosing prices beyond what the market would price them at if their gains treated like any other income.
It's the market's job to set ROI (and asset prices), not the government's.
It turns out that cultural nationalism without a culture of nationalism is absurd. When you define "Canadian" as anyone with the right paperwork, you can't possibly preserve Canadian culture in a positive way - because you don't even believe it exists.
As our population becomes much more international and the range of of internet based media explodes our national desire to hang onto proven failed content & delivery systems just continues to move us farther & farther back from the current realities.
Just last week I read the Cdn government is considering expanding government (handouts) subsidizes to more parts of the media industry. It is my view both the industry and government know the industry & its regulations are out of step with the reality on the ground but if the government did what was needed tens of thousands of current employees in the industry would be out of a job. We must be honest as Canadians that most of these folks are supported thru grants & subsidies and that this just an expensive form of Unemployment Insurance. One has to only look a the CBC viewership statistics to confirm my view.
CBC/CTV don’t get the content views of anything in comparison to YouTube. If I want news, like real comprehensive news, guess where we tune in. Cdn news content is so curated, so pared down of international points of view, it’s a waste of time. As for entertainment, well, I can’t think of a show that is a must see.
My mom has one despite not having a TV - it's part of a package that her condo association negotiated along with internet access. So, there's probably a fair bit of that as well.
Good point. The only time I've had it as an adult was when Bell was the only option for internet and it was cheaper to get internet with Fibe TV then without. Never even bothered hooking up the box despite having a TV.
I get TELUS TV and even landline still for only $20 more than Internet by itself. I only have Crave, sports and the local channels. (I still prefer local news in the background).
A lot of that 52% must be folks like me.
Mobility is also so flaky on occasion where I am I still have a landline. It's just more reliable, even in 2026 and again, almost free.
The problem with Canadian protectionism is not only that they want to force people to subsidize inferior products at inflated prices, but that they also want to deny Canadians the ability to access what Canadians feel are superior products *at any price*. It's the equivalent of East Germany erecting the Berlin Wall to prevent their citizens from fleeing, keeping them trapped in an increasingly decrepit and dysfunction police state that has little to offer.
If the Canadian government cut off the rent-seekers in media, culture, and even agriculture, there'd be a brief period of whining and squealing that would be politically unpleasant. And that's about it. The most recent example of this was when the Harper government ended the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly on grain exports. It's been a disaster for Churchill, Manitoba's subsidized sea port, but none of the other doomsaying proved accurate.
There's a lot of media production activity in Canada, and that would continue: it's just that it's mostly in service of profitable ventures run out of America. If there's compelling Canadian content, it too could be produced. That industry is motivated by money. Canadian cultural content would do likewise. Despite decades of CanCon, successful Canadian musical acts tend to have been ones that sought their fortune elsewhere.
It's a bit unnerving that a former CRTC commissioner (and by the sounds of it, 'one of the good ones') views Canadians reading the books and watching the movies they want to as foreigners "dump[ing] their product here". It's also a bit condescending to refer to this as "learned preferences". When Canadians are offered something Canadian that's good, they often will take it. The problem is much is not good as it is not designed to actually appeal to audiences.
> views Canadians reading the books and watching the movies they want to as foreigners "dump[ing] their product here".
You've misunderstood the contextual meaning of "dumping". He's not making a comment about the quality, he's talking about Americans selling it here below the cost of production. (Which affects the commercial viability and the quality of Canadian production). Here's the quote from the article:
> I detest the fact that American entertainment and sports programming can be dumped into the Canadian market **for pennies on the cost of production dollars at the expense of our own companies**.
This is what the Americans are angry about China doing. They're dumping their excess production into the US below cost which will harm or destroy American steel manufacturing if left unchecked.
It's a valid point. If the Americans are "dumping" their product into Canada, the effect on Canadian production will be exactly the same as Chinese steel dumping would have on American steel if it were allowed to continue.
No I'm not misunderstanding anything. Dumping has a very specific meaning in international trade law. Viewing Canadians reading the books and watching the movies they want to through the prism of another country dumping their excess steel inventory in Canada is the wrong prism, in my view.
A fair point. But American shows that spend $8 million per episode to product get sold into Canada for maybe $1 million per episode which makes it impossible for Canadians to compete when they can only spend, tops, $3 million per episode in production quality. That’s what “dumping” refers to. Do you think other CDN industries could compete with that sort of imbalance?
But all productions should be able to be sold abroad. If it can't, that's a very large indicator that it never should have been subsidized in the first place. One of the recent bright spots in Canadian film was Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, an unabashedly Canadian film that has still earned more in the US over Canada (and was made for peanuts). It shows that you can tell Canadian stories for less money and still compete.
Foreign media used to just mean American (DAs and all), but now more-and-more Canadians are consuming media from all over the world. Koreans are telling Korean stories about Korea, but they are making art to compete everywhere - not just tell Korean stories to Koreans.
Does anyone else find the statement from the CMPA CEO to the PM a bit worrying? i.e. “every person in this room and the 180,000 people who work in this industry have your back, just as we know you have ours.” Aren't at least some of those 180K folks supposed to be involved in critiquing our elected officials, including the PM?
The worst thing about that, Roki, is that you have to be careful who you say that to. Not because you will get in trouble but because all those LPC voters will just nod and agree and feel that you are one of them and they will feel confirmed.
Put differently, they don't understand whatsoever that they are the problem and they are the ones who are taking Canada down the drain.
For the last decade Canadians have been told that we are genocidal, homophobic, post national and all the other slurs Trudeau and his cult could conjure up during one of their virtue signaling speeches.
Our prime minister is an egotistical liar who is plunging Canada in debt at speeds unseen in generations.
We have immigrants who can't speak either of our two national languages and aren't required to know much about the country they are now calling home.
So the question should be, is there anyone other than a few left over patriots of convenience, care about the new 'progressive' Canada?
Next, you have properly identified the application of "speeds not seen in generations " - it is increased and increasing indebtedness, that phrase has nothing to do with positive changes to project approval or getting projects completed.
You correctly note that we, the basket of deplorable that so distressed the Face Painter, have found that our worsers' invocation of our national duty to support:Canadian-ness to be a fraud. Quelle surprise!
Another point is that, generally, our cultural industries are focused on the Canadian market, to the exclusion of international sales. There are exceptions, of course, and Canadian programs, music, etc., that do flourish on the international scene. But these are very rarely the product of the protectionist system that you describe.
This matters. Production costs soar ever higher. That makes it important to aim for large markets. Confining oneself to just Canada increasingly won't cut it. Deliberately running a system that limits its aims to the domestic market is perverse.
I make an exception, of course, for newsletters like The Line and the Hub, who do present excellent Canadian content outside of The System, and survive. But they occupy a very small corner of Culture with a capital C.
Tbh, I think its incomplete. I think the fear of American culture is taking over is not the only thing that's going on. Overseas culture is making large headways into Canadian culture. Like personally, I've haven't watched a Canadian or American series in a year. They're East Asian these days. The latest gaming trend are all Chinese. The music idols are Korean. The TV shows are Japanese.
And this also applies to Americans too. We're becoming more culturally alike Americans, but we're also just moving away from American culture.
And yet Toronto is all set to introduce a sports team from yet another American league - the WNBA - that’ll soak up sponsorship dollars that could go to Canadian sports and athletes. And it will play host to an NCAA football game while Canadian USports can’t get a sniff from our sports broadcasters. We love America
What we aren’t doing is building the physical and cultural infrastructure to support domestic leagues like the CEBL, NSL, CPL, PWHL and even the CFL. More of your cable bill goes south of the border in rights fees than to domestic leagues.
It would probably be, for people in the Canadian media sector, a simple 'well, duh' to hold that the traditional funding and granting bodies were constructed and then helmed by industry insiders so they have have effective control of the purse strings.
To have the CRTC mandate that carriers have a certain amount of Canadian content, but allow producers and artists compete for funding from any source other than the government or mandated levies, would probably result in not much less Canadian product effectively reaching Canadian eyeballs or ears.
What would likely go away are the niche, extremely narrow audience productions that are made but largely invisible. No independent investor, with the possible exception of philanthropic organizations, would be likely to fund such things. Congratulations, you're now like anyone with a camera and a dream that shows up at Sundance. Nothing wrong with that.
The current system is a redistribution system to political constituencies. I get to make my film. I get paid out of grants and funding. The film gets shown at a CFB showcase of brave stories that must be told. It gets shelved. The general citizenry never knows anything happened at all. Rinse and repeat.
I recognize this is a bit of the old model, but even if the same works were released on a streaming service like GEM the effect is the same. The long tail gives most media an audience of less than one. But you can't say you didn't have an audience.
And wouldn't Canadian children be better off if their cartoon viewing was restricted to "Rocket Robin Hood", "The Mighty Hercules", 1960s "Spider-Man", and Professor Kitzel and Max, the 2000-Year Old Mouse?
CBC and CTV are both pretty much unwatchable bilge, soaked in wokeness and anti-Americanism and people have increasingly tuned out. That said, American network and cable TV isn't much better, a wasteland of pharmaceutical ads, low budget reality drivel and left wing late night shows. Now, with live streaming taking over sports events, there really won't be anything left to watch on cable and YouTube, NetFlix, AppleTV and Prime are all that many people watch now. Propping Canadian content up with government subsidies won't go away but it won't make us watch the unwatchable.
Reminds me of acquaintances and friends who were cheering on the Jays as good nationalists.... except of course, the Jays were Americans playing an American game against other Americans. We may not buy Bourbon anymore but we prefer American TV sports or even going to games in border cities to the CFL or the soccer league that stumbles along. Hockey is the last hold out I guess.
As long as Canada has a Francophone minority we will be subsidizing culture, not matter how popular or mediocre it may be.
The Francophone cultural worldview just can't compute the private sector managing cultural funding. The state is the nation which is the culture in their eyes so only the state can't be trusted to protect the culture. English Canada is just along for the ride.
If something in Canada is good, it should not need subsidization. That includes films, online sites such as this one, and milk, chicken and eggs. Once subsidiation starts, it grows an industry around it collecting government (our) mony. Just stop it!
"How you gonna keep them down on the farm after they've seen Paris?" American popular entertainment has sweep the world because the world finds it attractive. I know this will offend and upset some Canadians but Canadian culture is but a pale reproduction of American culture. It's like Ketchup, the posh would never put it on the table but it is the number one condiment in the world.
"Canadian culture is but a pale reproduction of American culture". The fruits of official multiculturalism, the post-national state, and seeing "culture" as a financial gravy train from government.
And Survivor 50 is on!!! American network television is unwatchable drivel. The is no question that some of what the streaming services have come up with is brilliant. The networks offer sports.
I've heard it said that Canadian culture is the Temu version of American and UK culture.
Boom.
Drop the mic.
And we do it over, and over, and over again.
And that includes all forms of investment - because subsidizing a rate of return by only taxing half a capital gain (or zero in the case of principal residences) is just goosing prices beyond what the market would price them at if their gains treated like any other income.
It's the market's job to set ROI (and asset prices), not the government's.
The CPR was good.
It turns out that cultural nationalism without a culture of nationalism is absurd. When you define "Canadian" as anyone with the right paperwork, you can't possibly preserve Canadian culture in a positive way - because you don't even believe it exists.
What? You mean that cultural nationalism doesn't work in a post-national state? Nobody could have seen this coming...
BINGO !!!
Ditto.
As our population becomes much more international and the range of of internet based media explodes our national desire to hang onto proven failed content & delivery systems just continues to move us farther & farther back from the current realities.
Just last week I read the Cdn government is considering expanding government (handouts) subsidizes to more parts of the media industry. It is my view both the industry and government know the industry & its regulations are out of step with the reality on the ground but if the government did what was needed tens of thousands of current employees in the industry would be out of a job. We must be honest as Canadians that most of these folks are supported thru grants & subsidies and that this just an expensive form of Unemployment Insurance. One has to only look a the CBC viewership statistics to confirm my view.
CBC/CTV don’t get the content views of anything in comparison to YouTube. If I want news, like real comprehensive news, guess where we tune in. Cdn news content is so curated, so pared down of international points of view, it’s a waste of time. As for entertainment, well, I can’t think of a show that is a must see.
I think the most shocking part of this is learning that 51.5% of Canadians still have a cable or satellite subscription.
My mom has one despite not having a TV - it's part of a package that her condo association negotiated along with internet access. So, there's probably a fair bit of that as well.
Good point. The only time I've had it as an adult was when Bell was the only option for internet and it was cheaper to get internet with Fibe TV then without. Never even bothered hooking up the box despite having a TV.
I get TELUS TV and even landline still for only $20 more than Internet by itself. I only have Crave, sports and the local channels. (I still prefer local news in the background).
A lot of that 52% must be folks like me.
Mobility is also so flaky on occasion where I am I still have a landline. It's just more reliable, even in 2026 and again, almost free.
Right there. Ka-Booom. They are so behind the times
The problem with Canadian protectionism is not only that they want to force people to subsidize inferior products at inflated prices, but that they also want to deny Canadians the ability to access what Canadians feel are superior products *at any price*. It's the equivalent of East Germany erecting the Berlin Wall to prevent their citizens from fleeing, keeping them trapped in an increasingly decrepit and dysfunction police state that has little to offer.
If the Canadian government cut off the rent-seekers in media, culture, and even agriculture, there'd be a brief period of whining and squealing that would be politically unpleasant. And that's about it. The most recent example of this was when the Harper government ended the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly on grain exports. It's been a disaster for Churchill, Manitoba's subsidized sea port, but none of the other doomsaying proved accurate.
There's a lot of media production activity in Canada, and that would continue: it's just that it's mostly in service of profitable ventures run out of America. If there's compelling Canadian content, it too could be produced. That industry is motivated by money. Canadian cultural content would do likewise. Despite decades of CanCon, successful Canadian musical acts tend to have been ones that sought their fortune elsewhere.
And Churchill MB just might come back through exporting something else.
An emphatic "Yes!" to all of the above.
It's a bit unnerving that a former CRTC commissioner (and by the sounds of it, 'one of the good ones') views Canadians reading the books and watching the movies they want to as foreigners "dump[ing] their product here". It's also a bit condescending to refer to this as "learned preferences". When Canadians are offered something Canadian that's good, they often will take it. The problem is much is not good as it is not designed to actually appeal to audiences.
I seldom disagree with Mr. Menzies, but at this point I will make an exception.
What was Canadian Culture prior to the CRTC, MAPL, Heritage Canada, or any other of the teat-sucking iterations of the same organization?
Did it not exist if it wasn’t subsidized?
Remember, before it was subsidized, it had to be approved.
And that greasy, slimy, contemptible process just occurs over, and over, and over again.
> views Canadians reading the books and watching the movies they want to as foreigners "dump[ing] their product here".
You've misunderstood the contextual meaning of "dumping". He's not making a comment about the quality, he's talking about Americans selling it here below the cost of production. (Which affects the commercial viability and the quality of Canadian production). Here's the quote from the article:
> I detest the fact that American entertainment and sports programming can be dumped into the Canadian market **for pennies on the cost of production dollars at the expense of our own companies**.
This is what the Americans are angry about China doing. They're dumping their excess production into the US below cost which will harm or destroy American steel manufacturing if left unchecked.
It's a valid point. If the Americans are "dumping" their product into Canada, the effect on Canadian production will be exactly the same as Chinese steel dumping would have on American steel if it were allowed to continue.
No I'm not misunderstanding anything. Dumping has a very specific meaning in international trade law. Viewing Canadians reading the books and watching the movies they want to through the prism of another country dumping their excess steel inventory in Canada is the wrong prism, in my view.
A fair point. But American shows that spend $8 million per episode to product get sold into Canada for maybe $1 million per episode which makes it impossible for Canadians to compete when they can only spend, tops, $3 million per episode in production quality. That’s what “dumping” refers to. Do you think other CDN industries could compete with that sort of imbalance?
I hear you, but if that was the main metric then foreign books wouldn’t be doing as well as foreign tv/movies.
If you look at some of the Canadian success stories, like Heated Rivalry, they can do very well, including internationally, on a smaller budget.
Oh success is possible for those productions that can be sold abroad. But Americans still dominate and Canadians think they have district attorneys
This is probably a huge reason why boomers in Canada are so vehemently anti-American nowadays in aggregate. It's little brother syndrome writ large.
But all productions should be able to be sold abroad. If it can't, that's a very large indicator that it never should have been subsidized in the first place. One of the recent bright spots in Canadian film was Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, an unabashedly Canadian film that has still earned more in the US over Canada (and was made for peanuts). It shows that you can tell Canadian stories for less money and still compete.
Foreign media used to just mean American (DAs and all), but now more-and-more Canadians are consuming media from all over the world. Koreans are telling Korean stories about Korea, but they are making art to compete everywhere - not just tell Korean stories to Koreans.
Most Canadian content is just not interesting.
Does anyone else find the statement from the CMPA CEO to the PM a bit worrying? i.e. “every person in this room and the 180,000 people who work in this industry have your back, just as we know you have ours.” Aren't at least some of those 180K folks supposed to be involved in critiquing our elected officials, including the PM?
Remember, PJ,, "He who pays the piper calls the tune."
In this case it is mutual payment as the government funds the industry votes ....
for some party or other .
But it's okay when the Liberals do it. They are the "real Canadians" after all.
The worst thing about that, Roki, is that you have to be careful who you say that to. Not because you will get in trouble but because all those LPC voters will just nod and agree and feel that you are one of them and they will feel confirmed.
Put differently, they don't understand whatsoever that they are the problem and they are the ones who are taking Canada down the drain.
For the last decade Canadians have been told that we are genocidal, homophobic, post national and all the other slurs Trudeau and his cult could conjure up during one of their virtue signaling speeches.
Our prime minister is an egotistical liar who is plunging Canada in debt at speeds unseen in generations.
We have immigrants who can't speak either of our two national languages and aren't required to know much about the country they are now calling home.
So the question should be, is there anyone other than a few left over patriots of convenience, care about the new 'progressive' Canada?
A few comments, Carole.
First I do agree.
Next, you have properly identified the application of "speeds not seen in generations " - it is increased and increasing indebtedness, that phrase has nothing to do with positive changes to project approval or getting projects completed.
You correctly note that we, the basket of deplorable that so distressed the Face Painter, have found that our worsers' invocation of our national duty to support:Canadian-ness to be a fraud. Quelle surprise!
Thank you, Mr. Menzies.
Another point is that, generally, our cultural industries are focused on the Canadian market, to the exclusion of international sales. There are exceptions, of course, and Canadian programs, music, etc., that do flourish on the international scene. But these are very rarely the product of the protectionist system that you describe.
This matters. Production costs soar ever higher. That makes it important to aim for large markets. Confining oneself to just Canada increasingly won't cut it. Deliberately running a system that limits its aims to the domestic market is perverse.
I make an exception, of course, for newsletters like The Line and the Hub, who do present excellent Canadian content outside of The System, and survive. But they occupy a very small corner of Culture with a capital C.
Great point; stellar argument.
Tbh, I think its incomplete. I think the fear of American culture is taking over is not the only thing that's going on. Overseas culture is making large headways into Canadian culture. Like personally, I've haven't watched a Canadian or American series in a year. They're East Asian these days. The latest gaming trend are all Chinese. The music idols are Korean. The TV shows are Japanese.
And this also applies to Americans too. We're becoming more culturally alike Americans, but we're also just moving away from American culture.
And yet Toronto is all set to introduce a sports team from yet another American league - the WNBA - that’ll soak up sponsorship dollars that could go to Canadian sports and athletes. And it will play host to an NCAA football game while Canadian USports can’t get a sniff from our sports broadcasters. We love America
I will point out that even in sports, we're also just moving away from hockey/basketball, and moving towards European football leagues.
Ofc we love america still. But it seems to be more European these days with the world cup
What we aren’t doing is building the physical and cultural infrastructure to support domestic leagues like the CEBL, NSL, CPL, PWHL and even the CFL. More of your cable bill goes south of the border in rights fees than to domestic leagues.
It would probably be, for people in the Canadian media sector, a simple 'well, duh' to hold that the traditional funding and granting bodies were constructed and then helmed by industry insiders so they have have effective control of the purse strings.
To have the CRTC mandate that carriers have a certain amount of Canadian content, but allow producers and artists compete for funding from any source other than the government or mandated levies, would probably result in not much less Canadian product effectively reaching Canadian eyeballs or ears.
What would likely go away are the niche, extremely narrow audience productions that are made but largely invisible. No independent investor, with the possible exception of philanthropic organizations, would be likely to fund such things. Congratulations, you're now like anyone with a camera and a dream that shows up at Sundance. Nothing wrong with that.
The current system is a redistribution system to political constituencies. I get to make my film. I get paid out of grants and funding. The film gets shown at a CFB showcase of brave stories that must be told. It gets shelved. The general citizenry never knows anything happened at all. Rinse and repeat.
I recognize this is a bit of the old model, but even if the same works were released on a streaming service like GEM the effect is the same. The long tail gives most media an audience of less than one. But you can't say you didn't have an audience.
Bring back The Forest Rangers CBC. Also reboot King of Kensington.
And wouldn't Canadian children be better off if their cartoon viewing was restricted to "Rocket Robin Hood", "The Mighty Hercules", 1960s "Spider-Man", and Professor Kitzel and Max, the 2000-Year Old Mouse?
I #$#@ hate that mouse.
Maybe so, but Kitzel was awesome.
hahahahahaha!
CBC and CTV are both pretty much unwatchable bilge, soaked in wokeness and anti-Americanism and people have increasingly tuned out. That said, American network and cable TV isn't much better, a wasteland of pharmaceutical ads, low budget reality drivel and left wing late night shows. Now, with live streaming taking over sports events, there really won't be anything left to watch on cable and YouTube, NetFlix, AppleTV and Prime are all that many people watch now. Propping Canadian content up with government subsidies won't go away but it won't make us watch the unwatchable.
Reminds me of acquaintances and friends who were cheering on the Jays as good nationalists.... except of course, the Jays were Americans playing an American game against other Americans. We may not buy Bourbon anymore but we prefer American TV sports or even going to games in border cities to the CFL or the soccer league that stumbles along. Hockey is the last hold out I guess.
As long as Canada has a Francophone minority we will be subsidizing culture, not matter how popular or mediocre it may be.
The Francophone cultural worldview just can't compute the private sector managing cultural funding. The state is the nation which is the culture in their eyes so only the state can't be trusted to protect the culture. English Canada is just along for the ride.