OPINION: Canada’s broadcasting policy is solving yesterday’s problem — Part III: Funding Success

In the first article of this series, I argued English Canada's broadcasting system is no longer achieving the public policy objective for which it was designed: strengthening a shared Canadian cultural identity. In the second, I argued this is not primarily a funding problem, but a policy problem. Over time, Canada's broadcasting framework has accumulated an ever-growing list of objectives while continuing to measure success largely through industrial activity rather than audience outcomes. LAST WEEK: Canada’s broadcasting policy is solving yesterday’s problem — Part II: Defining Success Recent federal government announcements have understandably focused on financing. With the government reconsidering how or if foreign online streaming services will contribute to Canada's broadcasting system, Ottawa has indicated that it is prepared to provide substantial public funding to support the sector while a new policy direction is developed. If the existing policy architecture is no longer producing the outcomes it was designed to achieve, debate focused on preserving that funding of a failed mode is immaterial. Changing who pays for a system is not the same as changing whether the system succeeds. That distinction matters because Canada's current funding model is unsustainable. Traditional broadcasting distribution undertakings have underwritten a portion of Canadian programming for decades. That model reflected an era in which cable and satellite providers occupied the centre of Canada's media landscape. Today's entertainment market bears little resemblance to that world. Broadcasting remains important, but any long-term funding model should satisfy four fundamental principles: Fairness. Comparable participants competing for Canadian audiences should contribute on a reasonable basis. Sustainability. Funding mechanisms should be narrowed to meet clear and specific policy objectives to remain viable. Alignment. Continual review of whether broadcasters in Canada are actually meeting the needs of Canada's cultural framework. Outcomes. Public investment should ultimately be evaluated against the outcomes Parliament actually seeks. If the objective measure is strengthening Canadian cultural identity, then audience engagement with Canadian programming must matter more than production volumes or funding allocations. Viewed through those four principles, replacing one source of funding with another does not, by itself, constitute reform or contribute to success. It may temporarily stabilize the existing system, but it fails to demonstrate that the existing system framework remains viable. And throwing good money after bad is never good government policy. The current debate has become focused on preserving funding flows rather than a system that serves Canada. Our creators and audiences are not the problem. Nor are broadcasters or the CRTC, all of whom operate within the policy and regulatory framework Parliament has established. When looked at objectively, the question is whether that framework is working sufficiently to reflect the realities of the twenty-first-century entertainment marketplace. If the answer is no, then replacing anticipated industry contributions with taxpayer funding merely changes the source of the money while leaving the root issues unaddressed. That challenge is particularly significant because public funding is never free. Moreover, when financed through borrowing, it puts future obligations on Canadian taxpayers. A $600 million ‘investment’ by the government has a total cost (including repayment of interest) of at least $800 million. That means one quarter of all monies spent by Canadians on that content will never reach the production sector. And as more Canadians abandon cable, that debt repayment becomes an increasingly bad investment. Put another way, $800 million is making content for 20 million Canadians (since only 50% have cable access), resulting in each Canadian paying $20 - nearly two-thirds the amount they pay for CBC per year - for programming few Canadians actually watch. Since the top rated Canadian shows - excluding sports content - rarely reach more than 1 million viewers an episode, it is difficult to demonstrate that public investment will be achieving meaningful public outcomes. Before Parliament decides who should finance Canadian culture, it should first decide what success actually looks like in 2026-2050 rather than 1976. Only then can it create a funding model capable of achieving that objective, otherwise it risks spending ever greater sums preserving a system designed for a media environment that grows in obsolescence by the year. A modern Canadian content framework could distinguish between two fundamentally different public purposes. The first is commercially competitive Canadian entertainment. Government's role should be creating the conditions for success while allowing creators and investors to compete globally without heavy handed government involvement. The second is programming that markets alone are unlikely to provide in sufficient quantity but which Parliament considers essential to Canadian public life—news, Indigenous programming, official languages, emergency broadcasting, and programming of shared national interest, which all should be redefined in a narrow capacity as services of exceptional public importance. Those objectives deserve public support because they exist to serve citizens rather than consumers. Trying to fund both through the same policy architecture has produced decades of compromise instead of excellence. The broadcasting policy needs to be fully reviewed. Only section 3(1)(b) addresses national identity, and it’s been marginalised by over 50 other policy objectives. Audiences are mentioned but not seen as a core beneficiaries of national identity and cultural sovereignty efforts. These challenges aren’t insurmountable. Canada possesses world-class creators, broadcasters, producers and regulators. Modernizing that policy and regulatory framework will require political leadership, regulatory expertise and meaningful industry participation. If government is prepared to undertake that work, there is still every opportunity to build a Canadian cultural policy that is both sustainable and successful. The question is ‘if?’. 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 III: Funding Success

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By John P. Roman
|August 11, 2026

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OPINION: Canada’s broadcasting policy is solving yesterday’s problem — Part III: Funding Success

Broadcast | By John P. Roman |August 11, 2026

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