The CRTC Asks: Are you interested in helping to review how we define Canadian Content?

Hello,

The CRTC wants to engage with stakeholders in Canada’s creative audiovisual communities on how they view definitions of Canadian content. We are looking for showrunners, producers, directors, writers, domestic television broadcasters, content distributors and exporters, domestic online broadcasters, broadcasting distribution undertakings, foreign online services, digital first creators, actors, composers, editors, directors of photography, and animators! Do you work in one of these fields and have experience with the definitions and with Canadian programming certification that you would like to share? Do you have views on how the CRTC could possibly update these definitions for the benefit of Canada’s broadcasting industry?

The CRTC is organizing a series of workshops across Canada which should take place in the months of February and March 2024. This email is to seek your interest and availability in participating in such a workshop. If you would like to be added to a list of possible participants, please click here to fill out the information form by December 22, 2023. According to interest levels, we will determine the list of participants to be invited to each workshop and official invitations will be sent in January 2024. Please note, that we may not be able to accommodate all interested parties in all cities, as space will be limited. Expressing interest at this point does not guarantee an invitation.

Further details on the workshops are below.

When will these workshops happen?

Under the Broadcasting Act the CRTC is authorized to define Canadian content. We do it to support Canada’s creative industries, help Canadians tell their stories here and abroad and ensure that these stories can be seen. As part of the process of modernizing the Canadian broadcasting system, we determined that it was appropriate to review the definitions and indicated this in our regulatory plan published in May 2023. The recent Policy Direction from the Government reinforced that we are expected to proceed with consulting with Canadians and members of the creative and production sectors, and other interested parties, to determine what constitutes Canadian content. 

These workshops are preliminary engagement sessions and the views collected will help inform the future broad public consultations on this topic – in other words, you will help us determine the right questions to ask in the next steps.

We look forward to hearing from a diverse set of perspectives, including from Indigenous creators. Please note however that, in addition to the definition of Canadian content, we are separately considering how best to define and support Indigenous content as a part of the co-development of the Indigenous Broadcasting Policy. You can visit crtc.gc.ca regularly for info on upcoming public consultations regarding this process.

These workshops are intended to be collaborative where participants interact, share, and discuss their various views and their experiences working with the current definitions.

The CRTC will use the services of a third party specializing in qualitative research, IPSOS, to facilitate the discussions. After the workshops, IPSOS will develop a What we heard report for CRTC and public use, to be posted on our website. CRTC staff will observe the workshops but will not participate. The report will not name or identify specific participants. IPSOS might record certain parts of the workshops for report writing purposes, however these recordings will not be shared with the CRTC and will not be made public.