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Creighton also said critics are ignoring the success of Canadian content in the global marketplace. She said the export value of content in the audio visual media industry increased by 32 per cent in 2014-5 to a record $3.2 billion.

The CMF is a public-private partnership between the federal Department of Heritage and the country’s cable, satellite and IPTV distributors. Creighton says its public-private model means her organization “invests in content based on market validation — so there has to be a broadcast licence or a distribution arrangement demonstrated.” The Fund acts as a not-for-profit corporation and annually puts $371 million of funding into Canadian television and digital media.

Many critics of CanCon quotas have pointed to the advent of Netflix and online streaming as having created a more chaotic market, in which consumers have the power of virtually unlimited content curation that they argue renders CanCon moot.

But Creighton said Netflix is not a doomsday harbinger, and that in fact it has led to the emergenceof innovation in Canadian production models. She said many Canadian producers are going direct to Netflix with their content ideas, some are being acquired and some are getting deals for original content creation.

Creighton said she thinks one of the most interesting models around the Netflix question is the series Between, a sci-fi drama about a mysterious disease that kills everyone over the age of 21. “Rogers was the Canadian broadcaster that triggered CMF funding, Netflix was a fairly heavy investor in the budget and it was a kind of a partnership where it ended up with a good piece of Canadian content that resonated with audiences,” she said. “That arrangement was conducted under CanCon through the Rogers envelope, and the companies and funders involved created a model that worked successfully.”

Canadian sci-fi shows have had a triumphant few years, too. During the 2014-15 seasons, episodes of Between, Orphan Black, Dark Matter, and Killjoys all pulled in more than three million viewers in Canada, making them competitive with many American competitors.

“People describe CanCon as this outdated and broken-down model,” said Creighton. “It’s created jobs, it’s created more money, it’s leveraged public investment, it’s contributed to the GDP and I think it’s given us a pretty good pride of place at home.”

Financial Post