Getting past the gates: The new economics of Canadian broadcasting

This study tests conventional wisdom about why we regulate broadcasting in Canada. It is generally assumed that because economies of scale benefit American producers, content-based regulation is necessary, because Canadian content is beneficial in ways that American content is not. This assumption makes two unrelated claims: one economic, one cultural. Either could be true without the other being so. It is true that American producers enjoy natural economic advantages over Canadian producers, but that has no bearing on the 'national character' of the content. At the same time, it cannot be reasonably claimed that a producer's birthplace has any automatic bearing on the 'values' embodied in his or her work. Our current framework needs to be updated to separate the economic rationale from the cultural, and to reflect the open communications environment developing around it.