Equitable contributions under the Online Streaming Act and the role of programs of national interest (PNI) emerged as key topics on the third and fourth days of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications (CRTC) Cancon definition hearings in Gatineau, Que.

On Friday (May 16), the Motion Picture Association-Canada (MPA-Canada), which represents such U.S. companies as Netflix, Prime Video and Disney, called on the CRTC to develop a framework of obligations that do not “impose any mandatory positions, functions or elements of a ‘Canadian program,'” according to president Wendy Noss (pictured).

Doing so would collide with the statutory language of the Online Streaming Act that requires foreign online undertakings to “make the greatest practicable use of Canadian creative and other human resources,” she said.

“Online undertakings that produce programming should be allowed to fulfill their obligations through direct spending on production that is consistent with their business model” and not be “forced to pay into funds or into a program-acquisition model that is inconsistent with how their services operate,” Noss continued.

When asked about MPA-Canada’s stance on IP ownership, Noss said the organization thinks a flexible incentive-based collaboration model between Canadian and foreign undertakings “meets the moment.”

In his presentation to commissioners, Corus Entertainment co-CEO Troy Reeb said that “international streamers wrongly argue that Canadian broadcasters should have higher contribution requirements than the streamers do,” which he said would “cripple Canadian competition” and “benefit the streamers … alone.”

To “promote fairness between traditional and online undertakings,” Reeb recommended that the CRTC assign an annual 20% financial contribution requirement on all video broadcasting undertakings that generate more than $25 million in Canada.

“The obligation should apply on an ownership-group basis and include both traditional and online broadcasting revenue from Canadian and foreign players,” he said.

Large English-language Canadian broadcasters are required to pay 30% of their revenues to Canadian programming, while streaming services are required to contribute 5% of their annual Canadian revenues – a CRTC decision that is currently in front of the Federal Court of Appeal.

Doug Spence, VP of finance at Corus, said that streamers should also have a 15% contribution obligation “to spend on certified Canadian programs of their choice,” and benefit from credits for Indigenous and other “equity-deserving groups.”

He also called for an end to the spending quotas under PNI, which Spence described as “relics of a closed system where the CRTC regulated channel formats.”

They are an “unprofitable burden that struggling broadcasters can no longer afford, with no evidence that they are, in fact, of greater national interest than programs in other genres, like the national news,” said Spence.

Organizations that fund and produce films, however, emphasized the important role PNI plays in the creative ecosystem.

Julie Roy, executive director and CEO of Telefilm Canada, said that if the commission plans to establish an expenditure requirement for online and traditional broadcast undertakings, it should consider including original feature films and long-form documentaries as “integral parts” of a revised framework, which could include “maintaining PNI measures” to support such productions.

Government film commissioner Suzanne Guèvremont warned that a “modern Canadian content policy must not abandon the very thing that gives our stories meaning: cultural substance.”

“Removing cultural elements might seem to create openness, but in practice, it creates invisibility,” argued Guèvremont, who is also the chairperson of the National Film Board (NFB) of Canada. “When we erase cultural context, we lose the depth, diversity and the moral complexity that defines us as a country.”

She said that in other countries, such as the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, public funding for screen content depends on a cultural test, which “looks at things like recognizable settings, national relevance and depictions of everyday life.”

“These systems don’t limit creativity,” said Guèvremont. “They create space for it – and they work.”

She also cautioned that removing documentaries from the expenditures formula under PNI “will make all documentaries harder to fund, harder to program and harder for Canadians to access” – a move that will cut at the heart of the NFB, Canada’s largest producer of documentaries.

“In many ways, documentaries are similar to news, which the CRTC has rightly chosen to protect under PNI,” said Guèvremont, who noted that documentaries, like news, are “rooted in fact and truth, but “go deeper” than news that “give context” and “invite reflection.”

Kerry Swanson, CEO of the Indigenous Screen Office (ISO), raised the importance of PNI in her presentation on Tuesday (May 20).

She said that long-form documentaries are one of the “critical vehicles for Indigenous creators to share their stories, experiences and cultures,” and “the loss of the PNI requirements will have a devastating and debilitating impact on the Indigenous screen-based sector.”

Swanson proposed that 10% of the minimum PNI obligation for Canadian broadcasters and foreign streamers be earmarked for Indigenous creators, and that the same percentage of Canadian programming expenditure (CPE) requirements go toward supporting independently produced Indigenous programming.

As part of the overall CPE, traditional broadcasters should contribute 0.5% of their previous year’s revenues to the ISO, similar to the obligation imposed on online undertakings last year.

Meanwhile, as the CRTC considers whether to include a “cultural element” in its new definition of Canadian content, Marie Collin, president and CEO of Télé-Québec, told commissioners that “linguistic diversity is an important element of cultural diversity.”

She recommended that the federal broadcast regulator add a “language criterion to promote and enhance Quebec and French-Canadian culture by ensuring that Canadian programs participate in the promotion of the minority official language in Canada and North America – that is French.”

Collin said that points for Canadian content could be allocated based on language, with the maximum awarded when a film is produced entirely in French – a language that “unequivocally distinguishes us from foreign content, particularly American.”

Image courtesy of CPAC