Q&A: Rocket Fund white paper warns youth media industry in ‘crisis’

Project Sunbeam, a new white paper from Rocket Fund Canada, warns the children and youth media industry is in crisis. According to the paper, evolving technology use and declining funding for quality kids’ content has left youth disconnected from Canadian culture. The Wire Report sat down with Rocket Fund Canada CEO Agnes Augustin and Project Sunbeam lead researcher Kim Wilson to talk about how the disconnect will affect young people in the long term, and how it threatens Canada’s cultural sovereignty. Why did you commission this white paper? Augustin: Rocket Fund Canada’s role in the industry is we’re not just a funder of kids content, we’re also an advocate. Our stakeholders are children. The ultimate result of all the investments we do is for kids. We kept hearing kids are online, they have a lot of content, and the support has just been declining tremendously. So, we took a look at that and thought, well, we just don’t understand the industry, but we also don’t understand where kids are. We needed to have a resource for governments, industry, for everyone. So, we came up with the idea that we needed to have a white paper. The person I knew would be the right person was Kim Wilson. So I reached out to Kim and asked her to create this magnificent paper. What did the research teach you about the industry? Wilson: So many things. There are so many findings in here. Agnes and I talked quite a bit at the beginning about what we want to accomplish, and we were like, what hasn’t been done is somebody saying, ‘Let’s look at it all together.’ It’s this idea of saying okay let’s look at who kids are, what’s showing up on screens for them and all of their media, and how that ties into Canadian cultural sovereignty and empowerment of kids. Because every single thing ties back to kids and who they are and how they react to certain things and how it affects their behavior. Even now with technology it impacts their development, too. What ended up happening was, it all came down to one thing when we were thinking about kids first. Kids actually have the right to see themselves on screen. We have been leaders in Canada in child rights. They have the right to use technology safely, not somebody fixing it after the harms have already happened. When you actually look at the pieces that make up the rights we’ve actually committed to in this country, if we were doing all of those things, we would have a solid Canadian children’s and youth media industry. Because we would be needing to do the things that help make them feel connected to Canada, feel empowered that they can be whatever they want to be, that this is a country that means something to them, and that reflects not just what they look like, but who they are. If you pull it back to who are Canadian kids, and what needs are we meeting, and what needs aren’t we meeting based on their rights as citizens of this country? And there’s the piece of reach versus value. If we get a show that’s amazing, maybe it’ll have reach and value. And by value I mean, sometimes it makes sense for us to fund, for example, a video game that preserves four Indigenous languages. The impact on those four Indigenous communities won’t be the same reach as Paw Patrol, but I think we have to do more of that thinking, if we want to connect our children and youth to this country. Because the risk right now is children are losing their connection to this country, because English kids are mostly watching American content. It’s even worse for kids who are French Canadians, because not only are they not watching a lot of Quebecois content, because there’s only so much available, but there’s a thing called passive recalibration. The dominant language is what overwhelms the streaming services. If you’re living in Quebec and watch something on Netflix or Disney+, they’re listening to European French, not Quebecois French. And kids actually said, ‘I’m getting irritated by the Quebecois accent on screens.’ Tell me more about the value versus reach perspective. Augustin: How we value the content is not just about how many views something has. I think that’s something when we take a look at the ecosystem around content, what’s driving everyone is how many million views does this have? The question is is it qualitative? I think that to us is really critical because the wonderful thing about the online content world for kids is that they can find something specific. Even though we do want our content to go global and that’s certainly on the agenda, there’s an opportunity to reach kids with who they are. It should be less about the number of views and more about the meaningful part of it. Can you expand on the line in the report that says the youth media industry is in a “cultural emergency?” Wilson: The French example is probably the best one to understand. There is a huge cultural component around Francophone and Indigenous children in particular and making sure those stories are represented on screen. Our values are unique to Canada. Our culture is unique to Canada. There is a concern about kids not being connected to Canada. My concern is, as we get kids who grew up on streaming platforms, they don’t have those memories. We risk that connection where people remember, kids’ media, that’s where they learned so much about Canadian culture. And because of how much time kids are spending on media, it is the most dominant form of cultural learning that exists today. That is where kids are learning their culture and their country. I worry that if we don’t make some dramatic changes in terms of supporting this kind of content in Canada, we risk that there just isn’t a Canada for them to see. What they see online is biased and inauthentic that might not be accurately reflecting who Canadians are. We know that teens are starting not just to watch those streaming platforms and pick European French, they’re actually starting to pick English, because it’s dominating. When it’s the dominant language in the world, now that we have all this technology, it’s all pushing out more English than anything. What are the most promising findings from the paper? Wilson: There are quite a few. Kids in Canada know enough that Canada is a special place. So there is so much positivity that comes from that. Kids and parents really do want to watch Canadian content. It’s just we need to do more that reflects their actual lives. We’re a country that, on the world stage, is doing well. There’s a bit of benefit to what’s happening in the U.S., because it’s made Canadians realize how unique we are, that we do have these incredibly great values. When we’re talking to kids, they say things like I want to see more character strengths like hope, belonging. They recognize there’s a lot going on in the world. We know the difference good content can make. This is why this is such a big report. You have to be bold enough to take risks and make big changes. We need a big change if we want to actually do something different going forward. Agnes, how will this paper influence your work moving forward? Augustin: This paper has to influence what we’re doing going forward, because it addresses exactly what we were wanting to do at this point. Just as importantly, because of the amount of work we do advocating, we have sent the report to governments and regulators and decision-makers. It is a team Canada approach. It’s going to affect Rocket Fund in a way that we are going to call on everyone to be part of this solution. We have to look at what we’re doing, all of us, when it comes to children. We’ve been saying this for a long time, when we say Rocket Fund supports children and youth content, that’s not a genre. Almost 20 per cent of our population is under 18. That to me is the critical piece to all of this, we have to think about what we’re doing differently. And then on top of that, what can we do to influence change so that we take a look at our kids from the perspective we should be looking at them from, as we create content for them, as we enrich their lives, as we do all the great things that we do in our sector. We’ve already sent it directly to Canadian Identity and Culture Minister Marc Miller (Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Sœurs, Que.) and to Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon’s (Toronto Centre, Ont.) office. And we would like it to go beyond, actually, because of what this is. When we talk about what we do at the Rocket Fund, everything we do has to be safe for kids, it’s a public safety issue. The best part of this report is really understanding that children have a right to safe, meaningful content for who they are. My hope is, and we are going to push for this, is that it truly reaches all the right people in government and beyond the departments that we have and is looked at as a much larger tool and asset. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. mcollins@thewirereport.ca

Q&A: Rocket Fund white paper warns youth media industry in ‘crisis’

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By Maria Collins
|October 2, 2026

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Q&A: Rocket Fund white paper warns youth media industry in ‘crisis’

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