According to Patrice Theroux, digital distribution in Canada is not the enigma it used to be.

‘With the exploitations of the rights, I think every distributor is exposed to some form of digital distribution now,’ says the chairmain of the Canadian Association of Film Distributors and Exporters, as well as president of filmed entertainment at E1.

Content has become more widely available to consumers through what Theroux defines as four major categories: cable, IPTV, VOD, digital (i.e. Rogers and Shaw); TV and set-top consumer electronics (i.e. PlayStation 3, Xbox 360); PC and Mac; and mobile.

While ‘traditional’ new media sources are hard enough for the industry to adapt to, even newer avenues for distribution are coming online every month. Take for example the recent news out of Cannes that Sony Computer Entertainment Europe is offering a movie-streaming service with MUNI on the PS3, while HBO also just announced that its content will also be distributed on the game console in the US. There is still a question whether or not these services will come to Canada.

‘From a CAFDE point of view, we’re doing a review right now of some of the distribution act — how to treat those rights, the internet, how to monitor, how to apply some of these regulations,’ states Theroux. ‘It’s essential for our distribution system in Canada that we have the same guidelines over digital.’ He adds that this is a bit more of a difficult task because digital rights differ from country to country.

But some progress is on the horizon. Even now, Theroux says that services such as Netflix will be coming north of the border.

‘They’ve (Netflix) been talking about it for a while, they’re not sure what the timing is, but you’ll see more of these arising,’ he notes. ‘At the end of the day, it’s consumers accessing the same content, through film and digital. So we’re very interested as a group of distributors, obviously, how this will play. We hope the digital world is bringing a lot more access to the consumer and therefore expanding the pie in terms of entertainment dollar that’s going to be spent on film entertainment.’

And since digital distribution has become part of distributors’ daily activity, Theroux is hopeful that once the government addresses regulatory issues, that digital content will have to go the same route through a Canuck distributor as film and TV content.

‘What it does is it allows some of the money that’s generated in all this media to be retained in Canada by Canadian and redeployed into the Canadian system,’ he explains. ‘All the distributors do massive investment in Canadian content, so we do hope that money generated will expand with digital as well.’

Interestingly, Theroux adds that even though consumers have more choice than ever on how to consume their content, there was a spike in global box office numbers last year.

‘Who would have predicted in 2009 that the box office would have risen the way it did on a global basis? Despite a lot more access and different ways to access the content. It was one of my great pleasures last year to see [that].’

For now, he remains optimistic of digital distribution’s future in Canada.

‘I hope the government continues to monitor it and make sure we do retain a lot of Canadiana into those services,’ he says. ‘And that we make sure that all of these services contribute to a healthy production and distribution sector in the country.’