A s the CRTC continues its summer hearings on “market dynamics” under the Online Streaming Act – hearings that explore how traditional broadcasters and global streaming services compete and contribute to Canadian culture – one issue remains notably unresolved: what “counts” as Canadian content in the first place.

While the current hearings, which end on July 4, focus on market conditions and financial contributions, they are part of a larger regulatory process launched to modernize the regulation of Canadian broadcasting. This broader project includes defining what it means to reflect Canada to itself – an issue the CRTC took up directly during its May hearings on Canadian content definition and certification.

For over half a century, Canadian broadcasting policy has been underpinned by a powerful and oft-repeated promise: that Canadian content would “reflect Canadians to themselves.” It is a compelling national project – to see, hear, and understand ourselves through the stories we tell. But as Canada’s population becomes increasingly diverse and its media ecosystem ever more borderless, it’s worth asking whether our cultural policies still serve this aim.

A close look suggests they do not. And at its core, the failure isn’t just in the outcomes – it’s baked into how Canadian content has always been defined and regulated.

Successive Canadian governments have been preoccupied with avoiding the regulation of cultural subject matter. From the post-war period through to the digital era, policymakers have consistently sidestepped questions about what kinds of stories should count as Canadian. Instead, they have relied on an “input-based” system that measures Canadian content by production criteria: the nationality of the producer, the shooting location, the citizenship of key creative personnel, and so on.

This approach has offered the appearance of cultural support without wading into the fraught territory of thematic meaning or national identity. But in today’s media environment – where audiences are fragmented, global, and increasingly diverse – this reluctance to engage with cultural substance has become a serious liability.

Historian Ryan Edwardson traces the development of this regulatory aversion in his 2008 account of Canadian content policy – Canadian Content: Culture and the Quest for Nationhood. He notes that from the late 1960s onward, policymakers chose to define Canadian content in purely industrial terms to avoid political controversy. This meant avoiding anything that might suggest the state was prescribing national values or dictating creative expression.

As Edwardson writes, “The establishment of the CRTC and the beginning of policy discussions surrounding Canadian content in the late 1960s took a decided turn away from asking what constituted Canadian stories – and toward asking who was involved in the act of production.”

This bureaucratic retreat from questions of cultural meaning into structural criteria was not accidental. Philip Collins, writing in 1990, argued that this reluctance reflected a broader ideological commitment to liberal neutrality. As he put it, “The Canadian state is reluctant to involve itself in questions of cultural meaning because it fears the implications for freedom of expression and the perception of political interference.”

The assumption has been that regulating inputs – as opposed to narrative or theme – allows governments to support Canadian culture without being seen to dictate its shape. Yet in doing so, they have created a policy regime that actively avoids the question at the heart of any cultural project: “What are we trying to say about ourselves?”

The absurdity is hard to miss. A show can be certified as “Canadian” with a story set in Los Angeles or London, featuring no Canadian characters, themes, or even a passing nod to life in this country. What matters isn’t the nature of the story being told – it’s whether enough Canadians were hired as production staff. Rack up six points by hiring Canadians in the right mix of roles – and you pass the test. The resulting film or television series might look, sound, and feel entirely American – and still qualify. Why? Because the paperwork checks out. Cultural relevance is optional; bureaucratic compliance is everything.

As Edwardson points out, the question of “Canadianness” was effectively offloaded onto a checklist, transforming cultural policy into bureaucratic procedure. This has had distorting effects not only on what gets made but also on how creators approach storytelling. As Collins noted, “the rules of eligibility create a situation in which cultural producers tailor their projects to meet regulatory criteria rather than cultural relevance.”

The financial incentives tied to certification – funding from Telefilm Canada, access to tax credits, Canadian Media Fund support, etc. – make Cancon status a prize worth pursuing. But to achieve it, producers often focus more on the technicalities of compliance than the cultural content of their work. This means we are regulating for Cancon, not for Canada.

The input-based system may have once served as a pragmatic compromise in the pursuit of administrative simplicity and/or industrial development. But it is now running up against the limits of its own logic because in a multicultural and urbanized Canada, where immigration has significantly reshaped demographics and where younger audiences consume media on global platforms, the old assumptions no longer hold. It is not enough to “make Canadian content” if that content does not speak to the lived experiences of the people who are now watching.

And here is the uncomfortable truth: much of what qualifies today as certified Canadian content lacks cultural relevance – not because creators are incapable, but because neither the regulatory framework or the international marketplace have an interest in whether the content actually resonates with an audience. The system asks whether a production checks bureaucratic boxes, not whether it engages with the realities Canadians are living: our politics, our relationships, our histories, or the challenges that define us as a nation today.

The insistence on avoiding questions of theme or subject matter has led to a system where “Canadian” becomes a matter of personnel logistics, not cultural representation. We end up with television that meets every criterion except relevance.

The contradiction was on full display during the recent CRTC hearings on Canadian content certification. Over several days, industry stakeholders, guild reps, and production lobbyists leaned heavily on the language of national reflection – rhetoric meant to flatter policymakers and keep the funding flowing. Earnest declarations like “Canadian stories matter because they reflect who we are as a people” and “audiences deserve to see themselves in the stories we tell” made their usual rounds.

Polished and politically useful, these statements are also strategically hollow. They gesture toward a shared ideal without ever saying what – or who – is being reflected. Our willingness to recite the slogans while avoiding those harder questions shows just how comfortable the system has become with performing cultural nationalism in theory while evading it in practice.

It is time to reconsider the boundaries of cultural regulation. This does not mean the state should dictate acceptable themes or prescribe ideological messages. But it does mean accepting that a meaningful cultural policy must grapple with questions of representation, narrative, and identity. If we truly want Canadian content to reflect Canadians, we must be willing to ask: Which Canadians? In what ways? And with whose stories?

To do this, Canada might borrow from models in other jurisdictions that take cultural meaning seriously. In Australia, for example, public broadcasters are given mandates not only to use local talent but to reflect the diversity of Australian society in their programming. In the U.K., the concept of “public value” guides the BBC’s programming decisions, requiring a consideration of impact, representation, and innovation. These approaches do not avoid questions of cultural content – they embrace them, while still preserving editorial freedom.

Canada’s unique context calls for its own approach, but the underlying principle holds: a national cultural policy that refuses to engage with cultural meaning is not neutral in character – it is neglectful. And in practice, it means abdicating responsibility for how Canadian identity is shaped in the public sphere.

We are long past the point where the input model can be defended as an adequate stand-in for cultural reflection. The original fear – that evaluating content would open the door to censorship or political manipulation – was never entirely unfounded. But the greater danger today is that by avoiding cultural judgment entirely, we have created a system that performs cultural nationalism without delivering it.

As policymakers debate how much streamers should contribute and whether traditional players deserve regulatory relief, they must confront a deeper reckoning: What do we mean by “Canadian content” in the first place?

For too long, cultural regulation in this country has hidden behind forms and formulas, afraid to engage with the harder questions of meaning, identity, and relevance. That fear has hollowed out the very purpose of public cultural support. The sustainability of our cultural sector depends not just on money or market fairness, but on whether the content produced holds meaning for those it claims to represent. Any policy that rewards compliance over resonance, or box-checking over storytelling, is no longer fit for purpose.

The market dynamics hearings may be framed in economic terms, but their outcomes will shape the stories that get made – and the nation that gets reflected. It’s time for the government, and the bureaucrats who defend these systems, to show some courage. To acknowledge that culture is not neutral and never has been. And to accept, finally, the responsibility of helping a country understand itself.

Mark Musselman is a PhD candidate in Law at the University of Ottawa, where his research focuses on Canadian cultural policy, media regulation, and the evolving dynamics of national identity in the digital age. Prior to returning to academia, he practiced entertainment and media law at Goodmans LLP and spent nearly two decades as a senior executive at Serendipity Point Films, responsible for the commercial aspects of the development, financing, production, and distribution of its film and television projects. Mark later co-founded Barnraiser, a consultancy focused on film financing and cultural advocacy. 

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