Audience Reality Check #4
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The Canadian screen sector has spent the past week arguing over stability, fairness, and who should pay for Canadian content. It started with the CRTC’s announcement of a new Canadian programming expenditure framework, followed soon after by Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture Marc Miller directing the CRTC to review that framework and pledging an annual $600 million investment to stabilize the audiovisual and audio sectors in the meantime.
The reaction was swift and intense. Organizations including the CMPA and ACTRA argued that Canadian culture has been “sold out” to big U.S. tech interests, while the Directors Guild of Canada and Writers Guild of Canada cautioned that temporary public support cannot substitute for a stable, long-term financing framework.
But here is the reality check: we are still having an incomplete argument. In my first Audience Reality Check, I warned that we are building policy for a system that no longer exists.
The current fight over this $600 million lifeline shows exactly why that warning matters. While the sector argues over streamer contributions, expenditure quotas, and public subsidies, the audience question is still being treated as secondary.
Subsidies Stabilize…Only Audiences Sustain
This current debate is centred on how to fund the supply of Canadian content. Stable financing matters, and the concerns raised by writers, directors, producers, and performers should not be dismissed. But a sustainable Canadian screen sector cannot be legislated into existence through platform taxation and public subsidies alone.
We are fighting over who pays to make Canadian content while giving far less attention to how that content actually reaches people, earns attention, builds desire, generates conversation, and creates lasting cultural value. That is the missing layer.
We can see the gap most clearly in the parts of the cultural economy that already operate outside the traditional broadcast and screen system. Digital-first creators and independent cultural entrepreneurs often fall between traditional arts funding, screen funding, and small business support. Their leverage does not come from a broadcast or screen mandate. It comes from the community they cultivate, the data they can interpret, and the trust they build with the people their work is meant to reach.
They understand something our policy frameworks still struggle to absorb: direct audience connection is infrastructure.
The $600 Million Question
The federal government has put a massive annual lifeline on the table. But if it simply flows back into existing production pipelines without also investing in the audience infrastructure needed to connect Canadian stories to people, we will have bought stability without transformation.
Will this $600 million be used to build the shared data standards, audience research, release-pathway pilots, community-screening intelligence, and sector learning we desperately need? Or will it simply fund more Canadian content moving through systems that still do not know how to connect stories with modern audiences?
Protecting the Metadata Momentum
In my last Reality Check, I argued that the CRTC’s proposed working group on metadata and metrics was a vital first step for discoverability, Answer Engine Optimization, and AI search. That momentum cannot be lost.
While the government reviews the CRTC’s financial expenditure rules, it must protect the discoverability work embedded in the original decision. The fight over streamer and broadcaster contributions cannot be allowed to overshadow the less flashy but essential work of standardizing our cultural metadata.
Canadian stories need to be legible to the systems through which people now discover culture.
We Need More Than a Lifeline
We need to stop acting as if platform regulation is the only way to save Canadian screen culture. Yes, global platforms should contribute to the markets they profit from. Yes, public investment matters. Yes, Canadian ownership, employment, and original storytelling need protection. But none of that will be enough if Canadian stories remain disconnected from the people they are meant to reach.
We have the money. We have the stories. Now we need the courage to cultivate the audience relationships and infrastructure that makes the whole system viable.