The year 2020 marked a continued decline in Cancon commissioning, with further setbacks for underrepresented writers, according to new data from the Writers Guild of Canada.

The updated Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Report included member data across the 2020 calendar year, giving a glimpse of how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted both writers and the commissioning of Canadian content.

The report shows a year-over-year reduction in commissioned episodes in both live-action and animation. The number of half-hour children’s live action episodes fell by 76% and the number of half-hour adult episodes dropped by 48%, while the number of one-hour drama episodes fell by 19%. The number of half-hour animation episodes fell by 86% and 15-minute animation episodes dropped by 53%. The report does not reflect the amount of service animation work in Canada in 2020.

The number of animation episodes that were 10 minutes or less rose by 10%, with the report noting that “compensation is negotiable in this category and therefore much lower.”

The report also revealed that the percentage of writers from underrepresented communities working in Canadian TV fell to 22% in 2020 compared to 26% in 2019. The share of Indigenous writers fell to 1% in 2020, compared to 4% in 2019 — with the report noting that no Indigenous writers were involved in animation productions in 2020 — while LGBTQ2S writers dropped to 6% in 2020 from 8% in 2019. Notably, the share of LGBTQ2S writers in animation fell to 1.7% in 2020 from 4.1% in 2019.

The share of Black writers remained on par between 2020 and 2019 with 6%, while the share of other writers that identify as a person of colour increased to 11% in 2020 from 9% in 2019.

A further breakdown of the racial makeup of writers in 2020 show that 3.6% identified as South Asian, 2.8% as East Asian, 1.4% as Filipino, 0.9% as Latinx, 0.9% as Middle Eastern and 0.7% as Southeast Asian.

In terms of membership, of the 140 new members to the WGC in 2020, 15% identified as a person of colour, 12% identified as Black, 9% identified as LGBTQ2S and 4% as Indigenous, with no new members identifying as living with a disability. However, the overall percentage of the WGC’s members that identify as white, cisgender, straight and not living with a disability remains high at 90.2%, slightly down from 92% in 2019.

The report also revealed that the highest percentage of diverse writers in Canada held roles as a story editor (53.1%) or executive story editor (63.2%) for drama series in 2020, an increase from the previous year. The share of diverse showrunners or executive producers saw a slight decrease (23.5%) while co-executive producer (28.2%) and consulting producer (33.3%) positions saw gains. Other decreases were seen for supervising producers (14.3%) and co-producers (38.5%).

A breakdown by broadcaster showed that Bell Media increased its diverse writers in 2020, coming to 33% compared to 20% in 2019. Corus also saw a slight increase at 26% compared to 24% in 2019. Both CBC and TVO also had a share of 26% of diverse writers in 2020; that number was a decrease for CBC, which had 33% diverse writers in 2019, while TVO remained the same. The report also revealed that diverse writers made up 19% of Netflix’s Canadian writers in 2020, an increase from 14% in 2019.

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