The CMPA (Canadian Media Producers Association), APFC (Alliance des producteurs francophones du Canada), and AQPM (Association québécoise de la production médiatique) have joined a group of global media production organizations calling on local governments to regulate streaming platforms and safeguard national media production sectors.
Representing thousands of companies that work in the global screen sector with signatories from across the European Union, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand, the group says it wants to underscore the cultural and economic importance of local, independent storytelling, asking governments to recognize domestic production industries as strategic national assets.
“This is about ensuring local stories are discovered, developed and told on screen, and not lost to a massive, singular global content industry,” said Reynolds Mastin, President and CEO, CMPA, in a release. “The number of organizations from around the world that have signed on to this initiative is a vivid demonstration that the issues faced by independent producers here in Canada, are also confronting domestic producers in numerous other countries.”
To maintain cultural sovereignty, the group of global screen producers wants government regulation of digital streaming platforms to be guided by a series of principles, including ensuring that all platforms that derive financial benefit from conducting business in the local market financially contribute, proportionally, to the creation of new local content; and that government address market failure and any imbalance in commercial bargaining power in the creation and delivery of new, quality local screen content.
The group is also emphasizing the importance of independent screen businesses owning or retaining intellectual property (IP) rights to their work, including the right to financially participate in the success generated by their work on a platform. To that end, it wants government regulated investment frameworks to stipulate this.
The call comes as the CRTC continues consultations on implementing Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act, as Canada modernizes its own regulatory framework around defining Canadian content, market access, fee structures, and supports for news and local programming in the digitally-led streaming and broadcast landscape. That framework is targeted to launch late this year.
“On the one hand this underscores the significant scope of the challenges faced by domestic production sectors around the world, but on the other it provides a hopeful path forward; a path to work collaboratively across borders to develop common solutions that will bolster individual national sectors, while also creating a more vibrant global industry,” said Mastin.
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