WHEN HERITAGE MINISTER Mélanie Joly delivered her Creative Canada vision statement last Thursday in Ottawa I was extremely pleased on behalf of Canadian screenwriters — at last, a vision for Canada that puts creators at the centre.
While “creator” can mean many things, when it comes to screen-based entertainment, it means the showrunners and screenwriters that the Writers Guild of Canada represents. However, I wasn’t only pleased for WGC members because I also felt genuine hope — for the first time in a long time (remember the long, Canadian-arts-and-culture-dry years of the Harper government?) — for Canada. The direction of…
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IN QUEBEC, THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S cultural policy announcement has landed with a decisive thud. The province’s governing Liberals were as scathing in their denunciation of the “Creative Canada” policy as the sovereigntist Parti Québécois and the left-wing party Québec Solidaire. Highbrow left-wing daily Le Devoir accused the federal government of nothing less than “excusing injustice,” while right-wing sovereigntist columnist Mathieu Bock-Côté, writing in the Journal de Montréal, accused Canadian Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly of “dereliction of duty.”
The opinion pages of the centre-right tabloids Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, usually skeptical of all things Trudeau, lit…
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MONTREAL – Construction on CBC/Radio-Canada’s new home in Montreal is officially underway after a ground breaking ceremony held Sunday.
Canadian Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly, CBC/Radio-Canada president and CEO Hubert Lacroix, Broccolini Real Estate Group president Roger Plamondon, and Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre (all pictured) took part in the ceremony which also featured the release of dozens of butterflies in a symbolic guesture of transformation and innovation.
The new Maison de Radio-Canada (MRC) will have a total footprint of over 418,000 square feet and consist of a seven-storey tower and a four-storey tower connected by an atrium that is open to the…
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Looks like Netflix is chilling with Ottawa
OTTAWA – The Canadian TV biz held a three-hour, industry-wide affair in Ottawa on Wednesday evening, where the Canada Media Fund showcased internationally competitive primetime broadcast TV series to local bureaucrats and politicians (and juuust before Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly outlined her vision to change a bunch of things.)
Netflix and other foreign Internet players, and their impact on local producers and broadcasters, loomed large at the National Press Center event and Joly only sent along her Parliamentary Secretary, Sean Casey, to address the industry gathering and praise Canadian TV producers.
In stage-side comments to…
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OTTAWA – In a speech today at an Economic Club of Canada event, Minister of Canadian Heritage Melanie Joly officially unveiled the federal government’s long awaited digital content strategy. Dubbed 'Creative Canada', the plan has angered some and sated others and calls for increased investments to support both domestic production as well as the promotion of Canadian content abroad.
The release of the strategy comes a day after news leaked that the federal government had inked an agreement with Netflix that would see the online broadcaster and distributor invest a minimum of $500 million in Canadian productions over the next…
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GATINEAU – On Thursday, new CRTC chairman Ian Scott received his “welcome letter” from the two ministers who oversee the Commission, Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains.
The former government called such letters “mandate letters” which sounded a lot more like directives so this welcoming letter is more visionary, even though it uses the word mandate in its opening paragraph. We’ve copied it below and highlighted what we think might be the most important parts.
However, this being Ottawa, where everything is infused with politics, we’ll leave the reading between the lines to…
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OTTAWA – Netflix is building a permanent film and television production company in Canada that will invest at least $500 million in original content in both official languages over the next five years.
Folded in to Heritage Minister Joly’s new Investment Canada Act, the agreement is the first of its kind outside the United States for the streaming giant, who pledged to be “a meaningful partner in supporting Canadian creators, producers and the Canadian creative expression.”
Netflix also agreed to highlight and promote the new Canadian content to its subscribers in Canada and internationally, plus create a "market development strategy" to support Canadian French-language content on its platform. Centered…
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CBC/Radio-Canada explores credibility, democracy and public values at Annual General Meeting
OTTAWA – Despite “serious financial challenges, a fragmented ecosystem, the appearance of the global Facebooks and Netflixes of the world who have absolutely weakened the broadcasting model that used to support our industry,” CBC/Radio-Canada remains relevant and is thriving in a digital world, according to Hubert Lacroix, president and CEO.
In a presentation to the corporation’s Annual General Meeting on Tuesday, the chief executive, who’s nearing the end of his term, noted that when he took the reins in November 2007, digital mainstays like the iPad and Netflix didn’t exist,…
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OTTAWA – The Governor-in-Council, as directed by Minister of Heritage Mélanie Joly, has told the CRTC to get cracking on a new report – which must be done by June 1, 2018.
The new Order-in-Council, released Friday – just in advance of the Minister’s release of her review of Canadian content in a digital world today, tells the Commission, with all the appropriate “wherases”, that:
“Whereas Canada ratified, in November 2005, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions; Whereas the Government of Canada has announced a review of…
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Like, will broadcaster rules now apply to the streamer?
REPORTS LATE MONDAY said that the centrepiece of Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly’s 17-months-in-the-making strategy to energize, or backstop, the production of Canadian content in our always-on-and-everywhere digital age is that she has secured a commitment from Netflix to spend $500 million over five years “on the production and distribution” of Canadian content.
On the face of it, this is welcome news. Who in the creative industries wouldn’t like to see another $100 million spent annually on Cancon?
However, I hope this plan, which Minister Joly will officially announce in Ottawa today, has a…
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