The campaign to keep Canadian content alive
Heritage minister visits T.O. as part of mission to support homegrown art in digital age
Canada’s Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly urged participants at a consultation session in Toronto on Tuesday to “be bold” as the country grapples with ensuring Canadian content thrives in the digital world.
“It’s clearly time to rethink how we support and promote Canadian content,” Joly told the group of representatives from various cultural industry players gathered at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
“We need to create a system that better aligns with how we consume content today, including on digital platforms that didn’t exist at the time when our cultural policies were put in place.”
Tuesday’s gathering is the third of six consultations held by the Department of Canadian Heritage across the country, trying to determine how the government can ensure the strength and survival of Canadian culture in the digital age.
Joly hopes the people gathered at the consultation — a diverse group that included actor Paul Gross, YouTube star Corey Vidal, Sleeping Giant director Andrew Cividino, and representatives from the Toronto International Film Festival, Vice Media, and Twitter — will provide the government with ideas and feedback on the future of digital Canadian content. The consultation was l i vestreamed on Facebook, where people were able to comment and weigh in on the discussions. The online feedback covered a broad range of topics. Ash Catherwood suggested microfinancing as opposed to big budgets, which creates more opportunities for diverse content and content creators. Erin Benjamin said a government and industry led committee should examine the state of Canadian music venues. Another user, Ayla Lukic-Roman, asked why Netflix was exempt from paying into the Canadian system.
The consultations come at a challenging time for some aspects of the cultural industry. In September, it was announced that Canadian streaming service Shomi — Canada’s own version of Netflix — would be shutting down at the end of November.
“The media landscape is going through a lot of complexity,” Joly said. “We want to make sure we have a good ecosystem that is able to support content creators and at the same time that their content is discovered, watched and liked.”