Collaborating with U.S. broadcasters and streamers on Canadian content will require new partnership models, according to some of Canada’s top media executives.

“Real partnership is where all parties have the same vested interest, and that’s almost impossible when you’re talking about companies that have a single purpose, which is to maximize revenue on a global scale,” said CBC/Radio-Canada president and CEO Catherine Tait during the conference’s closing panel on Friday (Feb. 2), referring to working with foreign-owned streaming services.

Comparing working with streamers to “a partnership with a 400 ton gorilla,” she referenced the upcoming untitled Arctic comedy, which CBC partnered with both APTN and Netflix on. “I have to read in the papers that Netflix is launching a show in Iqaluit that we [CBC and APTN] developed, that we’ve all financed,” she said.

APTN CEO Monika Ille pointed that Canada’s Indigenous broadcaster is at a point where it cannot produce scripted dramas without a partner, and that often it means taking a second window on Indigenous-led series, including Little Bird and Bones of Crows.

Justin Stockman, Bell Media’s VP, content development and programming, said there needs to be a change of thinking at the U.S. broadcaster as well, where they’ll fill programming holes “with the cheap stuff they can get from Canada.”

“Our focus this year is to change the dynamic, and it starts with elevating the view of what Canadian content is to U.S. players, and not treat us like a dollar store,” said Stockman, adding that if they can collaborate on the content they’re buying and see the value of it, broadcasters will be in a position to provide a higher level of financing.

Both Tait and Valerie Creighton, president and CEO of the Canada Media Fund, emphasized that the industry needs a more “unified voice” when it comes to consultations on the future of the sector.

Creighton said the first phase of consultations with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission around implementing Bill C-11 were an example of how the industry had a hard time articulating a “particular position about what our industry is.”

“Everyone went out and pitched their self-interests and positions to get what they needed,” she said.

“I thought that the foreign streamers in the first phase were very persuasive, and that’s a problem for all of us,” added Tait, pointing to arguments from companies such as Netflix and Paramount Global against setting a base contribution to the screen sector. “They were amazingly well-prepared, they had one single message… [the second phase of consultations are] the opportunity to talk really clearly in a unified voice about why it matters to own the content that we produce, and why it matters to have a domestic industry.”

Tait also responded to remarks from Minister of Canadian Heritage Pascale St-Onge the previous day at Prime Time about plans to review CBC/Radio-Canada’s mandate. “I was encouraged that the Minister said the premise was not to examine whether or not there should be a public broadcaster … [and] the idea that defunding [CBC] is a bad one,” she said.

“Will this expert panel come up with brilliant ideas? I’m sure they will. Can the Minister pull it all together in time before the next election? I certainly hope she can. But let’s be clear, the mandate for CBC/Radio-Canada does not need to be reviewed. What needs to be reviewed is the financial model and how we are governed,” continued Tait, noting that other global public broadcasters have five to 10-year charters for long-term planning, whereas decision-makers at Canada’s public broadcasters “live in a perpetual state of tenterhooks not knowing what the next year brings.”

AI: ‘Do not confuse talent with tools’

Creators won’t be replaced by artificial intelligence, “but by someone who uses AI,” said Nicholas Ning, founder and CEO of global AI consulting firm, Farpoint Technologies Inc., as part of a master class on the “promise and peril” of AI and the content industry.

“Generative AI,” he explained, “is just a tool for an entirely different way of storytelling” and “will augment the way that you work.”

Jared Ficklin, founding partner and chief creative technologist for global product design firm, argodesign, said that “we’re in the midst of a technological sea change” with AI, not seen since the Industrial Revolution. “AI going to be bring about a golden age of robotics,” he said. “AI breaks the last mile of automation when it comes to robotics.”

Ficklin explained that in everyday use, AI will find files quicker and “make language more natural and more intuitive.”

He told his audience of creators to not confuse talent with tools. “I tell my designers all the time, ‘You are still experts on design,'” said Ficklin, who says he believes that we are entering “an age of hyper-creativity.”

He also emphasized that “technology should live in service of humanity, not the other way around.”

“Technology should amplify humanity, not emulate humanity,” he continued. “Technology should treat privacy as a virtue, not as a right, [which] is binary. Technology should seek to create presence, not escapism. Technology should serve to build authenticity over building influence.”

Will AI ever be able to produce art worth consuming, panel moderator and journalist David Reevely asked the experts? “It never will,” replied Ficklin. “It will produce art that creates a reaction,” but not, as “a masterpiece.”

“It’s a quality argument, but it’s also a humanity argument,” he said.

As Ficklin added, if AI becomes “the culture, there will be a subculture of human-produced goods.”

Creators’ role in driving change

The minds behind film and television series can influence as much entertain, said psychologist Anthony Morgan, co-host of CBC’s The Nature of Things, who used the science-based series as an example of how the media industry can raise awareness and drive change to address the global climate emergency.

“What we’re trying to do on our show is to highlight stories of people who know how to lean into creativity, to curiosity, to collaboration,” he explained. “We’re not doing as many talking-head interviews where we’re meeting scientists who already have the outcome of their research. Instead, we want to see them find those answers in real time because we can see how they do it.”

Morgan stressed that in a deeply divided world, “where we begin to dehumanize one another” through rancorous political polarization, it’s important to remember that “before people care what you believe, they have to believe that you care.”

“We as filmmakers have a unique opportunity to genuinely reshape the way that our culture works because we genuinely are the ones that are making the culture that we consume,” he concluded.

With files from Kelly Townsend and Christopher Guly

Pictured (L-R): Reynolds Mastin, Monika Ille, Catherine Tait, Colette Watson, Valerie Creighton, Justin Stockman