OPINION: Canada’s broadcasting policy is solving yesterday’s problem — Part II: Defining Success

In my previous article, I argued English Canada’s broadcasting system is no longer achieving the objective for which it was originally designed: strengthening a shared Canadian cultural identity. If that premise is accepted, then government has an obligation to respond. Before deciding how to reform the system — or even how to fund it — we must first answer a more fundamental question. What will success actually look like? For decades, Canadian cultural policy has largely measured success through industrial metrics. We count production hours, expenditures, jobs, certification points and funding envelopes. Those indicators tell us whether an industry is active. But they tell us remarkably little about whether Canadians are actually watching Canadian stories, recommending them to friends, discussing them around the dinner table. Perhaps we have been measuring the wrong things. LAST WEEK: Canada’s broadcasting policy is solving yesterday’s problem In almost every other sector of the economy, products are developed because consumers want them. Canadian cultural policy reversed that logic. It broadly determines what should be produced, establishes funding mechanisms to support those efforts, then places the content on cable that approximately 50 per cent of Canadians don’t even have. When Canadian audiences opt for something else, we increasingly describe the problem as one of discoverability. Rarely do we ask the much more uncomfortable question: did the system create something Canadians genuinely want? That question points toward a deeper structural problem. Over successive decades, Canada’s broadcasting framework has accumulated an ever-expanding range of public policy objectives. Section 3(1) of the Broadcasting Act now sets out an extensive series of cultural, linguistic, industrial, economic and social objectives, reflecting the priorities of successive governments. Many of those objectives are entirely reasonable when considered individually. Collectively, however, they present a significant challenge. Good public policy requires prioritization. Every added objective introduces another consideration into funding, regulatory and production decisions. Eventually, policymakers are no longer optimizing for one clear purpose; they are attempting to optimize dozens of sometimes competing objectives simultaneously. That is not sustainable. In Canada’s case, the primary objective must be clear: helping create Canadian stories that Canadians actively choose to watch. That does not mean abandoning other public policy goals. It means recognizing that they are ancillary and should support the creation of compelling Canadian content rather than become measures of success independent of audience outcomes. The distinction matters because creativity does not function like public administration. No committee has ever developed a reliable formula for producing a cultural phenomenon. Consider Clarkson’s Farm. On paper, it sounds absurd: a middle-aged motoring journalist buys a farm despite knowing almost nothing about agriculture, then spends each episode blundering into increasingly inventive ways to make expensive mistakes. It is difficult to imagine many funding committees identifying that premise as a global success story. Yet millions of people—including many Canadians—have embraced it because it is authentic, funny and unexpectedly human. The lesson is not that Canada should produce its own version of Clarkson’s Farm. The lesson is that audiences reward compelling ideas. Canada must begin thinking differently about the industry itself. Canadian broadcasting has not disappeared, but it is no longer an industry unto itself. It has become a subset of a much larger global content ecosystem. From the consumer’s perspective, a new Canadian television program, a YouTube video, a podcast, an audiobook, radio station, a Twitch livestream, a video game, or an old TV program streamed on an American platform all compete for the same scarce resource: people’s attention. Our regulatory assumptions, however, still largely reflect an era when broadcasting occupied the centre of Canada’s media universe. That is no longer the case. The objective of contemporary Canadian cultural policy cannot be to preserve yesterday’s broadcasting model. Rather, it must be to maximize the specialized creation and appeal of Canadian programs so that Canadians want to consume it. That requires a different relationship between government and the creative sector. Government should establish clear narrow national objectives, ensure accountability for public investment, and support programming of genuine public importance. It should resist the temptation to continually expand the list of policy outcomes expected from every publicly supported production. Creative industries thrive when creators are trusted to create. Moreover, there is nothing inherently wrong with Canadians enjoying the best stories from around the world. The objective has never been cultural isolation. Rather, it’s about cultural confidence. Achieving that goal will require more than another incremental amendment, another consultation or tweaking another funding mechanism. Two decades of audience trends tell us that the current framework has reached the limits of the possible. English-speaking Canadians deserve better than 55 per cent of the government’s cultural attention when they’re more than 75 per cent of the population; and all Canadians deserve a policy framework designed to serve audiences and tomorrow’s creators. If we truly want Canadian culture to flourish, we must stop asking whether we have satisfied every policy objective and instead confront the most fundamental question: Can we as a G7 nation once again consistently create content that Canadians actually want to watch? John P. Roman is a governance, regulatory, and public policy executive who served as Director of Legal & Regulatory for the Canadian Communication Systems Alliance (CCSA). His work focuses on broadcasting and telecommunications policy, regulatory modernization, and governance in highly regulated industries. The positions and opinions expressed by The Wire Report columnists and contributors are solely reflective of the author’s perspective and do not necessarily reflect The Wire Report’s views or values.

OPINION: Canada’s broadcasting policy is solving yesterday’s problem — Part II: Defining Success

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By John P. Roman
|August 4, 2026

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OPINION: Canada’s broadcasting policy is solving yesterday’s problem — Part II: Defining Success

Broadcast | By John P. Roman |August 4, 2026

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