Canada’s Culture Czar Tells Hollywood on Local Content Diversity: “We’re Just Different”

Etan Vlessing
·4 min read

As Canadian heritage minister Pablo Rodriguez looks to modernize what qualifies as a Canadian film or TV series for U.S. streamers now obligated by law to invest in local content, he has a message for Hollywood.

“As Canadians, we know, we love you guys, our American friends. We love you. But we’re different, We’re not better. We’re not worse. We’re just different,” Rodriguez told the Banff World Media Festival as he looks to American media players to bring Canada’s TV and film productions to international markets.

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Rodriguez’s Liberal government in Ottawa recently passed into law Bill C-11 to compel U.S. digital players including streamers to, for the first time, invest in Canadian-content production.

But the CRTC, which regulates the Canadian broadcast industry, will now hold hearings to establish the amount of investment expected from the U.S. streamers into local content, as local broadcasters have long done.

And the federal government will hold hearings at the same time on bringing clarity to what qualifies Canadian film or TV program, or “Canadian stories,” to modernize the country’s broadcast laws. “We’re just going to dig a little deeper on these issues,” Rodriguez said.

Upcoming negotiations with industry players will be significant as, if Ottawa wants Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ to bring Canadian content to the world market via their platforms, it must clarify for the American players what will be certified as “Canadian content.”

As things stand, rules around what constitutes as “Canadian content” are vague and up to endless interpretation.

Disney streamed Turning Red, the Pixar Toronto-set drama about a Chinese-Canadian teen and MGM adapted The Handmaid’s Tale, a novel by Canada’s Margaret Atwood, for Hulu, but those projects didn’t count as “Canadian content” because they were financed by American players.

Local industry players want the definition of Canadian content expanded to give U.S. streamers an incentive to invest in local stories. The Canadian Media Fund, the biggest local financier in local TV series, welcomed the upcoming hearings with industry funders.

“Minister Rodriguez has been instrumental in modernizing our production and broadcasting system and ensuring that it reflects who we are as Canadians. We look forward to working on the next critical steps that will allow the CMF to better serve our growing industry and ensure Canadians are getting the content they want across platforms and formats,” Valerie Creighton, president and CEO of the CMF, said in a statement after the comments in Banff by Rodrigues.

Also in Banff on Monday, CRTC chairperson and CEO Vicky Eatrides addressed her own hearings set to establish local content expenditure obligations for U.S. streamers.

“We’re getting to work, because there’s no time to waste. While we have seen an influx of investment in our creative sector, including investments from domestic and foreign productions, not every part of the broadcasting system is reaping equivalent benefits,” Eatrides said of giving a leg up to underrepresented talent and content creators as the role of U.S. streamers in investing in local content is hammered out during upcoming hearings.

Meanwhile, U.S. streamers continue to invest in local content. On Monday, indie studio marblemedia said it had sold a single camera teen comedy series, Davey & Jonesie’s Locker, to Hulu in the U.S. and Prime Video in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The series will be showrun by creator Evany Rosen and will follow Davey and Jonesie, two eccentric best friends in high school who discover their locker is actually a portal to the multiverse, allowing the duo to escape their high school for new horizons. The series stars Veronika Slowikowska as Davey and Jaelynn Thora Brooks as Jonesie.

“The goal we’re working towards is to give Canadian creators even more opportunities to tell their stories. And by this, we mean all creators, including those who may not have been as visible in the past. Specifically, we’re thinking about underrepresented and underserved groups,” Eatrides added of efforts to get U.S. streamers to invest in local Canadian stories that celebrate differences.

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