What exactly is CanCon? And is the policy still working?

Decades ago, our government, and the body that oversees Canadian broadcasting, decided that homemade content was in danger of being overwhelmed by the vast flood of music, television, and film coming from the United States. The solution? A policy that required broadcasters to fill a certain amount of their programming with Canadian-made content, or "CanCon" as it came to be known.

But the media landscape looks very, very different today than it did in 1991. And while Canadian-made content still manages to break through (see: Rivalry, Heated), and the CRTC has periodically updated the regulations, there's no question the CanCon policy no longer covers all it was intended to. Should it change? Did it work? Is it still needed? Not at all, or more than ever?

Michael Geist is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, and one of the country's foremost experts in media policy in the digital age. He joins Jordan to explain 35 years of CanCon, and if we need 35 more.

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