OpenMedia presents community’s vision for Canadian Content at CRTC Hearing

Your OpenMedia team appeared at CRTC last week, and brought forward your asks: we want easier access to Canadian content when we want it, and firmly oppose it being forced into our feeds when we don’t!

On May 21, 2025, OpenMedia's Executive Director, Matt Hatfield, and Senior Campaigner, Jenna Fung, appeared before the CRTC public hearing in Gatineau, Ontario, for proceeding CRTC 2024-288 on defining “Canadian program” and supporting the creation and distribution of Canadian programming in the audio-visual sector. Our objective was to directly convey community feedback regarding the definition and discoverability of "Canadian Content." 

Our testimony underscored a key message from our community: Ordinary Canadians seek easier access to Canadian content when desired, but oppose its forced inclusion in their feeds. We told the CRTC what you told us:  the definition of Canadian content should put some weight on Canadian locations, Canadian history, and the full representation of Canada's diverse population. We want to see parts of our distinct country on-screen in Canadian content! This contrasts with the definitions proposed by many other groups, mainly from the production industry, and the CRTC itself, which for now focus on complex back-end production roles, with no creative or cultural elements. We stressed the importance of more noticeably Canadian content clearly, and asked the CRTC to help showcase our national identity––from yesterday and today––to the world!

You can watch the full recording of our appearance, including our opening remarks and the subsequent Q&A session HERE.

For a detailed review of our presentation, please read the full text of our opening remarks submitted to the CRTC HERE.

Our intervention submitted to the CRTC in January 2025 was directly informed by insights gathered from our community. To learn more about the public's views on these issues, we invite you to explore the results of our survey conducted in response to the CRTC 2024-288 proceedings in this article: “OpenMedia’s community believes in Canadian Content, not protectionism.”