The Dependency Trap

Canadian film and television producers want regulators to give them what the markets won’t.

Canada’s production sector is at risk of mistaking cultural regulation as a substitute for market leverage – and the sudden pivot by the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA) from praising the CRTC’s new “Canadian program” definition - to seeking leave to appeal it to the Federal Court - is simply the latest, clearest snapshot of the pattern.

In Canada, the instinct is not to build a stronger bargaining position, but to ask the regulator – or the courts – to redesign the bargaining environment.

The “dependency mindset”

In professional settings, a “dependency mindset” takes hold when someone treats the institution as a substitute for leverage. Rather than building credibility through results, they default to process: rules, escalation, and managerial intervention. When outmatched, they push to standardize the interaction or rewrite the policy so the system delivers what their performance or bargaining position can’t. Over time, they get better at working the bureaucracy than competing in the work, and start asking the organization to supply the leverage.

Used carefully that concept maps onto a recurring feature of Canadian cultural-policy debates. For decades, many film and television producers have treated federal cultural policy not only as a framework for the support of production, but as a mechanism to stabilize commercial outcomes: subsidies, tax credits, mandated financial contributions, broadcast quotas, certification rules – and now, increasingly, regulatory interventions designed to improve producers’ negotiating outcomes with global buyers.

None of this is an attack on individual producers. Canada has some serious creative talent, and the structural realities of a small market beside the U.S. are real. My concern is structural: our default policy reflex has too often been to treat regulation as a replacement for leverage – especially when the market offers terms we don’t like.

The production industry wants access to global markets and global money, but often lacks confidence in its ability to negotiate and thrive there without regulator-supplied leverage.

The CMPA’s decision to appeal

The CMPA’s decision to seek leave to appeal the CRTC’s new “Canadian program” definition is revealing precisely because it happened in real time.

On November 18, 2025, the CMPA publicly applauded the Commission’s “modernized” definition – encouraged by its emphasis on Canadian ownership and pleased to see references to “guiding principles to ensure fair negotiations among production partners.” Only a few weeks later, the association changed course and filed in the Federal Court of Appeal seeking leave to appeal the very decision it had just welcomed.

That pivot isn’t merely a communications wobble. It’s instructive because it captures the dependency mindset in one move: access the benefits of flexibility, then ask the state to protect you when a stronger counterparty uses that flexibility efficiently. It evidences a structural problem: the production industry wants access to global markets and global money, but lacks confidence in its ability to negotiate and thrive there without regulator-supplied leverage.

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What the CRTC actually did

Whatever one thinks of the policy, the Commission tried to respond to a streaming-era fact that policy debates often dance around: modern financing involves shared ownership, layered rights, and complex arrangements among multiple stakeholders.

The new framework ties certification more directly to Canadian copyright ownership and uses a sliding scale: as Canadian copyright ownership rises, the requirements for Canadian participation in key creative roles become less demanding; as Canadian ownership falls, those creative-role requirements become more demanding. The decision also states a floor: at least 20% of the program’s copyright must be retained by a Canadian.

In other words, the CRTC aimed to modernize certification while resisting the temptation to become a deal-maker. It signaled a preference for flexibility over prescriptive micromanagement and left commercial terms where they belong: with the parties at the negotiating table.

The premise is simple: the regulator can define what counts as “Canadian,” but it should not write the term sheet.

Be careful what you wish for

The irony is that this move toward flexibility did not materialize from nowhere. It reflects what many Canadian producers – CMPA included – have been pressing for in the streaming era: a certification framework that can accommodate modern financing and rights-sharing without killing projects at the deal stage. That argument was often framed as a “give-and-take” model: foreign services could obtain more rights in exchange for more Canadian participation in key creative roles. – and the Commission’s new approach largely embeds that logic.

However one feels about the policy, it is hard to deny that the CRTC’s architecture resembles the structure the CMPA itself placed before the Commission.

Yes, producer advocates also warned about the predictable downside: powerful buyers would push for maximum ownership wherever possible, and a highly flexible model might not ensure Canadians “control and benefit in a significant and equitable manner” from exploitation. The problem isn’t that the risk was unforeseeable. It’s that the response is once again to treat negotiating weakness as a policy defect – and to reach for regulatory or judicial correction instead of rebuilding leverage at the table.

This is the recurring pattern: ask for flexibility to access global markets and global money – then complain when global markets behave like global markets.

This isn’t culture - this is leverage

To facilitate litigation, the appeal had to be framed in the language of cultural policy and statutory purpose. But the engine underneath it is commercial. The concern is not simply whether Canadian ownership exists somewhere on paper; it’s whether producers can benefit from ownership in practice through meaningful control over exploitation and the ability to capture downstream value.

I negotiated financing arrangements with powerful international parties for 30 years. The concern is legitimate – but the proposed solution is the problem.

Global streamers are not cultural patrons; they’re businesses. They will do business on terms that make economic sense for them – especially when they can identify a regulatory baseline that produces certification and keeps the financing machine moving. A clarified baseline becomes a tool. And the party with the most leverage tends to use tools efficiently.

So the anxiety is rational. But the move from anxiety to litigation is where the dependency mindset shows itself: when outcomes look unfavourable, the instinct is not to build a stronger position, but to ask the regulator – or the courts – to redesign the bargaining environment.

Not competitive? Regulate!

This is not only about one legal appeal. The broader push, increasingly visible in the streaming era, is toward policy-supplied bargaining leverage.

CMPA advocacy has not stopped at defining Canadian content in a way that reflects modern financing. There have also been calls for baseline terms and conditions – sometimes framed as “codes of practice” – meant to govern how negotiations with streamers unfold, including what producers can retain by way of exploitation and commercialization benefits. That goes beyond the building of cultural scaffolding. It is a move toward the state shifting from defining what Canadian content is to shaping the commercial terms on which it is financed, owned, and exploited.

The logic is consistent: If negotiations don’t produce acceptable outcomes, don’t improve what you bring to the table – move the table.

What Canadian producers need – especially in a market dominated by global buyers – is leverage that can’t be granted by policy and can’t be fabricated in court.

What decades of dependency mindset have produced

Over time, this approach does more than shift deal terms. It shapes industry identity and competence. It rewards mastery of administrative process, compliance architecture, and leverage-seeking over innovation, risk-taking, and audience demand. It produces a creative sector that becomes highly fluent in government and increasingly uncertain in markets – more practiced at securing conditions for success than at creating success that generates leverage.

And the cost is not abstract. An industry trained to depend on policy for leverage will underinvest in the harder work of building leverage:

• developing properties with genuine audience pull;

• creating Canadian IP that travels because it’s wanted (not because it qualifies for certification); and

• building enough commercial confidence – and alternatives – to walk away from bad terms.

What a non-dependent strategy would look like

A healthy production sector does not need the regulator to negotiate its deals. What it needs – especially in a market dominated by global buyers – is leverage that can’t be granted by policy and can’t be fabricated in court. That starts with audience pull: work so compelling, distinctive, and repeatably bankable that it travels on its own merits and forces buyers to compete for it. It also requires commercial confidence – enough clarity about value, enough alternative pathways to finance and distribute, and enough willingness to walk away – with “no” being a credible option rather than an empty threat. And it demands innovation, not a buzzword, but a disciplined practice: new approaches to development, financing, packaging, rights strategies, distribution, and partnership structures that reflect how the business actually works now, rather than how we wish it worked.

Regulation can support those conditions. But it cannot replace them. When policy is asked to replace them - by hardwiring bargaining leverage into certification criteria or importing deal terms into regulatory codes - the industry becomes less capable of developing leverage on its own. Dependence becomes normalized; weakness becomes managed instead of cured.

It’s a path to continued weakness.

Same strategy, same results

If the goal is a more innovative, resilient, commercially confident Canadian production sector, retrofitting negotiating outcomes through regulatory escalation – whether at the Commission, in cabinet corridors, or in the Federal Court of Appeal – is not modernization. It is the same reflex, updated for the streaming era: ask government for flexibility, then ask government to supply the bargaining power.

That is the dependency mindset in motion. It has never been a path to strength. It is a path to continued weakness – managed, normalized, and periodically litigated.

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