One of Canada’s largest media companies called for an end to what it views as a broadcasting regulatory framework that favours foreign streamers or that focuses exclusively on the independent production sector as part of its presentation to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications (CRTC) on the seventh day of Cancon definition hearings in Gatineau, Que.

Rogers Communications argued that the financial obligations imposed on its media and distribution businesses “are too high, too inflexible and significantly exceed the amount established for foreign streamers just last year,” said Dean Shaikh, the company’s SVP of regulatory affairs, in his presentation to the CRTC last Friday (May 23).

In June 2024, the CRTC imposed requirements on online streaming services that make $25 million or more in annual contribution revenues and that are not affiliated with a Canadian broadcaster to contribute 5% of those revenues to certain funds.

In its presentation, Rogers proposed a framework for supporting Canadian programming that would establish a single financial contribution for each broadcasting ownership group of no more than 5% of total combined BDUs and media revenues.

“Maintaining historical financial requirements on us that are not imposed on foreign streamers will force Canadian companies to operate at much higher costs than these global giants who already enjoy business efficiencies that are not available to foreign streamers,” Colette Watson, president of Rogers Sports & Media (pictured), told commissioners.

“Our contribution requirement must be equitable to that established for foreign streamers.”

But instead of focusing on “standardizing the contribution framework across broadcast groups,” the CRTC hearings [have] instead limited the focus to CPE [Canadian programming expenditures],” she said.

“That approach ignores the considerable contributions that groups, like Rogers, make to Canadian programming and does nothing to address the inequity that exists today between massive American streamers and traditional broadcasting undertakings.”

Susan Wheeler, VP of B2B distribution and regulatory at Rogers, said in order for the CRTC’s revised definition of what constitutes a Canadian program “to truly benefit Canadian broadcasting undertakings, we believe that any program produced or commissioned by a Canadian owned and controlled broadcaster should automatically qualify as Canadian.”

This approach, she said, “would support the principle that Canadians should exercise creative and financial control over a Canadian production by ensuring Canadians retain a majority ownership interest in the intellectual property rights of the Canadian program.”

Wheeler said that if all broadcast undertakings are required to operate under a points system, “only a simple majority of the creative positions must be met to qualify as a Canadian program, and none [of them] should be mandatory in meeting this simple majority.”

She added that the public disclosure of revenues, expenses and subscriber levels of individual services “should no longer be required” as such information “provides our competitors with direct knowledge of our programming investments and revenue sources” – a matter that is “untenable” since online undertakings are only required to report aggregate revenues that are not publicly disclosed.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA) recommended a shift in approach to CPE, beginning by setting a contribution level for independent production expenditures (IPEs).

CMPA president and CEO Reynolds Mastin said that IPE requirements would be satisfied through two models that would be “differentiated by varying degrees of Canadian control over copyright, license terms, exploitation rights and back-end participation.”

An independent production model would find a broadcaster or streamer paying a license to an independent producer for the right to monetize the content – either through subscription or advertising revenue – on a platform for a certain period of time, he explained.

Independent producers would retain the IP rights to that show and enable them to sell it in markets that were not part of the license agreement with the commissioning broadcaster or streamer,” Mastin said.

He explained that the other model is intended for productions involving domestic and international partners “where a highly flexible approach could be taken to IP ownership,” such as the existing model for co-ventures and the “commission’s ‘give and take’ model of greater Canadian creative control to reasonably justify increased non-Canadian ownership in certain cases.”

Mastin said that to ensure fairness across both models, the CMPA proposed a CRTC-approved “code of practice to mitigate power imbalances while maintaining a clear, consistent standard for what constitutes Canadian creative and economic control.”

Jocelyn Hamilton, president of television at Lionsgate Canada, also expressed support for a mandated IPE requirement – of no less than 75% of CPE – “tied specifically to content produced by independent Canadian production companies.”

She said the IPE requirement should only be met when “intellectual property rights in programs are fully Canadian-owned, and a meaningful economic interest – both in production budget allocations and back-end entitlement – is held by a Canadian production company.”

In its submission to the CRTC, Friends of Canadian Media (FoCM) stressed that Canadian programming must ensure that key creative positions – particularly writers, directors and performers – remain primarily Canadian; that “the creative direction and control of a Canadian program remain in Canadian hands;” and that “Canadians retain control of the financial aspects of a production by ensuring the producer is Canadian.”

FoCM pointed to several examples of some major series shot in Canada for foreign streamers, such as Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, with a mainly foreign cast, along with U.S. directors and screenwriters. “A Canadian novel [by Margaret Atwood] and Canadian crew rightly does not make it Canadian programming,” said FoCM in its presentation, which underscored that foreign-service production cannot “masquerade as Canadian programming to allow foreign streamers to meet their requirements” under the Online Streaming Act whose goal is to modernize The Broadcasting Act.

Meanwhile, Carol Ann Pilon, executive director of the Alliance des producteurs francophones du Canada, called on the commission to “impose firm, binding and minimum expenditure requirements on original, first-run French-language programming produced by and for official language minority communities (OLMCs).

“For any undertaking for which such expenditures would be inappropriate due to the nature of its services, an equivalent amount must be allocated to funds intended to support the creation of original French-language content by OLMC producers,” she said.

Image courtesy of CPAC.