Q HOST TOM POWER is a good interviewer. But even he can’t penetrate Heritage Minster Mélanie Joly’s ability to avoid giving a direct answer to a direct question.
The Minister appeared on CBC’s Q last week (screen-capped at right) to talk about the #MeToo movement (she was in Toronto to meet with a number of groups on that topic) as well as discuss Canadian content in the new, digital era. We’ll pick up the chat at the 6:40 mark.
After mentioning Netflix’s planned $500 million investment in making content in Canada, which was the centrepiece of Minister Joly’s Creative Canada announcement (and is good news), Power asked Joly the same question which so many in the Canadian TV production and broadcasting sector want to hear answered. Under that deal, asked Power, “what counts as a Canadian production?”
Joly’s answer, even allowing for the fact that her English can sometimes be a bit muddled, was baffling: “I’m happy with the investment in Netflix because, I guess you’re referring to that as well in your question, is that there are really good series that Netflix decided to invest in. Take Alias Grace, for example. I had a good meeting with Sarah Polley and she was saying when thinking about how to create Alias Grace, she had a big challenge. And her challenge was what? She had to show the fact that there was this was an immigrant family and she had to build the ship, which is extremely costly. Because of the investment with Netflix, she was able, actually, to create the right images to tell an amazing story, Margaret Atwood’s story. And so, this is the type of story that the Netflix deal is able to showcase so Canadian production is basically investing in Canadian stories.”
Not even close to answering the question about what counts as a Canadian production under her new deal (the ship reference was about one of the sets built for that production, and there’s a good explanation about the production here), so Power tried again. He took a different tack, asking instead about the show Riverdale (a production shot in Vancouver which has its first window on CW Network in the U.S. but is available next day on Netflix), asking “does that count as a Canadian production?”
Joly’s answer: “Netflix wants to do much more investments in shooting here, but they wouldn’t have to do a Canadian production house to do that, quite frankly, and so they decided to create a Canadian production house and that’s the first time that they do that outside of the U.S. And why they would want to do that is to actually make sure that there are more Canadian stories told and that they can partner with broadcasters here to make that happen.”
Riverdale is a fine, popular show with a rabid following. But it is not a “Canadian story.”
Onward. Power noted he believes Canadians like the idea of having Canadian content, but when it comes to sitting down to be entertained, that idea doesn’t much factor much into their decisions, and then asked Joly “what do you make of that?”
"My expectation is that they’ll invest in Canadian stories and that’s why we’re reviewing our entire system." – Mélanie Joly
Joly: “I think the bigger story is ‘what’s our relationship with digital platforms?’ You and I must go on our phones about 150 times a day and so we know digital platforms are there, and so I’m concerned about the fact of how can there be Canadian content on these platforms. As a Francophone, my preoccupation is ‘how can we find French content on these platforms? How can people have access to stories that reflect where they live?’ And so, there’s no free ride for digital platforms. My expectation is that they’ll invest in Canadian stories and that’s why we’re reviewing our entire system.”
Okay. That she does expect “digital platforms” to invest in Canadian stories was something approaching a substantive answer. However, the rhetorical questions she asked in her answer to Power are substantially the same ones Joly has been asking the industry and Canadians for over two years. It’s disconcerting that the minister has no answers (or at least none she’s willing to share) yet, especially considering her government is supposed to be overhauling the Broadcasting and Telecom Acts.
Power then asked the taxation question, as in why isn’t Netflix compelled to collect sales taxes. He also asked why the big global streamer isn’t also made to pay into the Canada Media Fund. (This is a common mistake made by many consumer media reporters since the CMF is funded primarily by contributions from cable, satellite and IPTV carriers, with some also from the federal government, and not from content creators who actually receive CMF funding).
Joly: “Right now we don’t have the levers to make that happen and so that’s why I decided to ask my team to review. We will be reviewing the Broadcasting Act and the Telecommunications Act. Ultimately the bigger question is how can our kids have access to stories that reflect where they live and actually that we have a common culture as a country while they have access to a new system, which is, well, a system they use more than maybe sometimes the analog one – which is the Internet.”
Once again, these are standard soundbites Joly has repeated ad nauseum (including during the 2016 Discoverability Summit), and this much-ballyhooed review is taking an inordinate amount of time to even begin so we now wonder if there is enough time left in the federal government’s mandate to complete as complex an overhaul as one to the Telecom and Broadcasting Acts.
It’s now nearly two years since Joly launched her original review of Cancon in a digital age and we’re coming up on a year since the federal government announced it would review the two Acts and still no hearings or committee meetings have yet been scheduled to talk about it. Besides the $500 million from Netflix and asking the CRTC for a new report, there is precious little to show for the minister’s endless talk. There may not be enough time left to actually do something before the next federal election in October of 2019.
Remember the CRTC’s Let’s Talk TV process (which only changed policies governing television and changed nothing about radio or telecom or wireless of broadband)? That took three years.
To listen to the entire interview, click here.
