The Measure of a Nation - How CanCon Came to Define Us

Apr 23, 2025

In the long history of Canadian identity crises, few concepts are as revealing—or as misunderstood—as “CanCon.” Short for Canadian Content, the term refers to a sprawling network of regulations and funding mechanisms that govern what qualifies as “Canadian” on our airwaves, who gets paid to make it, and which media giants must comply. The system is complicated, often arcane—but its origins lie in a deceptively simple question:

In a media-saturated world, how do you avoid being defined by someone else’s story?

The 1920s Invasion That Started It All

CanCon’s story begins in the 1920s, when Canada was still finding its voice—literally. American radio signals were flooding across the border, delivering everything from vaudeville acts and jazz bands to Chicago-based sermons and New York soap operas.

The Canadian government grew increasingly uneasy: listeners were tuning in en masse to U.S. content, and American advertisers were profiting from listeners—all beyond Canadian control or oversight. It wasn’t just a technical issue—it was a question of sovereignty, both cultural and political.

In response, Ottawa established the Royal Commission on Radio Broadcasting, (a/k/a The Aird Commission) which concluded in 1929 that Canada needed a publicly-owned national broadcasting system to ensure programming that would “enrich Canadian life,” strengthen Canadian identity, and strengthen national unity.

“In a country of the vast geographical dimensions of Canada, broadcasting will undoubtedly become a great force in fostering a national spirit and interpreting national citizenship.”
— The Aird Commission (1929)

The First Regulatory Line in the Sand

The government acted quickly. In 1932, the Conservative government of R.B. Bennett passed the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Act, introducing a 40% cap on foreign programming. It marked the first time Canada used broadcast regulation to carve out space for domestic cultural expression.

The term Canadian Content didn’t yet exist, but the principle was clear: Canada would not cede its cultural space without a fight. As Ryan Edwardson puts it in Canadian Content: Culture and the Quest for Nationhood, this was the moment the state began to see broadcasting not just as technology—but as a nation-building tool.

Television and the Rise of Cultural Anxiety

The postwar arrival of television raised the stakes. No longer just the background noise of radio, television programming now demanded attention—blending sound and image to captivate viewers in shared visual experiences, night after night.

And increasingly, what Canadians were watching wasn’t Canadian at all. From I Love Lucy to Dragnet to The Ed Sullivan Show, American television shaped what Canadians saw, valued, and discussed.

To policymakers, this was no longer about market share—it was about cultural displacement. The concern wasn’t that Canadians disliked their own stories; it was that they might never get the chance to encounter them. Left unregulated, Canada’s media landscape risked becoming an echo of someone else’s identity.

Quotas, Control, and the Bureaucratization of Culture

A turning point came in 1958, with a new Broadcasting Act that placed Canadian content squarely in the realm of regulation. By 1959, the first formal content quotas were introduced for private radio stations.

The state had begun, in law, to define what counted as Canadian culture—and to mandate its presence on the air. When the Act was revised again in 1968, the mandate was even clearer: broadcasters were now legally obligated to support programming that would “safeguard, enrich and strengthen the cultural, political, social and economic fabric of Canada.”

What had begun as protectionism had become official cultural engineering.

[Pierre] Trudeau’s Cultural Blueprint

For Pierre Trudeau, cultural regulation wasn’t just about storytelling—it was about holding together a challenged federation. Confronted with rising Québecois nationalism, Trudeau turned to cultural policy as a tool of unity.

Federal support expanded rapidly. The government began investing directly in Canadian film and TV through the Canadian Film Development Corporation (now Telefilm Canada) and the Canada Television Fund (now the Canada Media Fund).

Alongside these investments came a growing web of rules: ownership thresholds, grant eligibility criteria, certification systems, and—by 1984—the introduction of the much maligned CanCon points system, an intricate rubric that grounded Canadian identity in terms of crew lists and creative credits.

A Policy Gospel Unexamined

By the 1990s, the Broadcasting Act had been revised again (1991), but its underlying philosophy remained intact. The system had grown more elaborate—layering quotas, funding schemes, and co-production treaties—but the core assumption still stood:

Without regulation, Canadians would not see themselves.

That may have been true once. But is it still true today?

CanCon was designed for a time when broadcasting space was limited—when radio and television operated on fixed schedules and a small number of channels determined what audiences could access. It was an era of analog scarcity, where Canadian stories had to be carved out through regulation or risk being crowded out entirely. But today, we live in a world of digital abundance, where platforms are limitless, content is on-demand, and creators can reach audiences without going through traditional gatekeepers.

And yet, we continue to invest hundreds of millions of public dollars each year into a regulatory regime built on the assumption that Canadians still need state intervention to see themselves—an assumption that, in this radically transformed media landscape, has rarely been seriously revisited. (This is the point of my earlier Substack post which is available here.)

That’s the question at the heart of my research—and it’s one I think we should all be asking. Because if the cultural infrastructure we’ve built no longer reflects the realities of contemporary Canada, then it’s not just outdated. It’s expensive, inflexible, and possibly standing in the way of a system which could be more dynamic, more reflective, and more respectful of who we have become as a people and a nation.