August 15, 2026
Canadians, it seems, are not looking for a moment of national humiliation in the face of US trade aggression. Public polling tells us so and hats off to The Line’s Jen Gerson for spelling it out.
“Canada is working to secure some kind of interim deal, and if the leaks are to be believed, we’re going to give the Americans essentially everything they want while they maintain most tariffs on us. It appears to be a shit deal for us, and one that puts us directly in the glide path toward vassal state.”
Visceral, yes. True, also yes.
The film and television production community thinks so too and said so this week, more politely, in an Open Letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s federal government.
The Open Letter published by the Canada Media Producers Association, and signed by 50 industry organizations, restates the industry’s dismay at the federal government’s decision to overrule the CRTC’s cash and investment obligations for US streamers.
The government’s current position is that later this year it will formally instruct the CRTC to strike down media fund cash levies on Hollywood streamers while the federal cabinet dictates a new figure for the direct streamer investments in Canadian programming that will be required. The government says it will dip into federal coffers to make up the difference.
“The government’s $600 million per year pledge, though appreciated and welcome, is not a substitute for durable, legally enforceable contribution obligations,” CMPA President Reynolds Mastin is quoted in the press release. “Discretionary funding is subject to budget and external political pressures; a regulated contribution framework is not.”
The CMPA and the broad spectrum of industry signatories to the Open Letter appear to be a content to stick with the CRTC’s overall 15%-of-revenues benchmark for streamer investments in Canadian content, even if it is missing the cash contributions to Canadian media funds that recycle the money into Canadian-produced programming that becomes available to the streamers through licensing agreements.
The signatories to the Open Letter also appear comfortable with the CRTC’s new investment obligations for Canadian broadcasters, reduced from 30% to 25% of revenues in May. No broadcasters signed the letter.
Notable absentees from the otherwise exhaustive list of signatories include the Los Angeles-headquartered film crew union IATSE Canada and the Toronto International Film Festival. TIFF chair Cameron Bailey was recently appointed by the federal government to represent the media industry on the federal government’s advisory committee on US-Canada trade talks.
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Flying below the radar, the Canada Media Fund just announced that it has signed an Expression of Interest agreement with the Los Angeles-based Interlink Investment Group. A consortium of Canadian cultural groups signed on to the EOI, including the Vancouver Asian Film Festival, Racial Equity Screen Office, and Muslims in Media.
The CMF exists to allocate production funding, contributed by the federal government and Canadian cable companies, to independent Canadian producers creating and licensing Canadian content for television and streaming broadcast.
The project that CMF CEO Valerie Creighton has in mind is to create a public-private investment fund to support “a new model for international collaboration in the media and technology sectors that would complement Canada’s screen-sector ecosystem, creating new pathways for investment, co-production, technology development, content creation, and international distribution across a range of sectors, including film, television, digital media, gaming, creator economy ventures, artificial intelligence, virtual production, and emerging content technologies.”
Apparently, funding for a Canadian media tech stack.
The text of the EOI agreement has not been made public.
There are a million questions that arise out of the Fund’s surprise announcement. The first is whether this is a freewheeling Creighton floating a trial balloon or, on the other hand, a subtle move by an unseen hand on the federal government’s chessboard of media policy.
Heritage Canada has yet to comment on the proposal and no money has been committed by either public or private investors.
The semi-autonomous CMF is majority-funded by the federal government, seats two government appointees on its board, and reports on its programming activity through the Department of Canadian Heritage.
The Canadian-educated Interlink chairman, Shezad Rokerya, is a member of the World Economic Council and chairman of the Canada–UAE Sovereign Wealth Fund Council. The Council appears to be an investment platform with personal endorsements from Canadian diplomats but not a formal status within government.
The policy idea of a Canadian owned media technology stack suggested by the CMF press release is consistent with at least two ideas much in general discussion of late: exports of Canadian audiovisual content and Canadian sovereign control over the distribution network for that content.
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Is Paramount chair David Ellison planning a runaway shop to punish California for challenging its merger with Warner Brothers Discovery ?
After a federal judge sided with 12 plaintiff state governments to delay a trial date for their anti-trust lawsuit until March 2027, Ellison has threatened to move his entire studio operation out of Hollywood to another state if California does not negotiate an out of court settlement with him now.
Paramount begins paying $7 million per day to Warner Brothers Discovery shareholders on October 1st while the merger remains unconfirmed.
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This post is copyrighted by Howard Law, all rights reserved. 2026.
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