Russell Peters as Doug D’Mello in The Indian Detective.

Russell Peters’s much awaited return to television was finally satiated with the CTV show The Indian Detective, which aired last December. The sitcom has been five years in the making, and it’s a first for Peters, a Canadian stand-up comedian who began his career in Toronto. It tells the story of Doug D’Mello (played by Peters), a Canadian investigative cop who travels to India to meet his father and gets caught up in a criminal investigation. But the show has already received mixed reviews from audiences across the board. Reviewers have called it out for perpetuating stereotypes about India and failing to engage with its audience, both in Canada and abroad. The show received an overall rating of 6.6 on IMDB, although Rotten Tomatoes gave it a generous 87 percent.

Spread over four episodes, the series sought to set a new trend in Canada by internationalizing the setting of its production, with large parts of it being shot in India. The Indian Detective’s transnational location gets one wondering if CTV was hoping to create an international sensation, or at least engage with Canada’s vast multicultural population.

The show is the most recent addition to a short list of multicultural-themed TV programs produced by major Canadian public and private broadcasters, such as CBC and CTV. Canadian television, though, remains a limited-option entertainment platform that is often overshadowed by the U.S. With just over 58 percent of Canadian households consuming cable TV in 2016, the story of Canadian television programming remains rather humble. Its 2016 revenue was just over $7.2 billion.

Why aren’t Canadians watching traditional cable? Though there are technological and other reason for decline in cable subscriptions, one question must be considered: Who are the TV shows in Canada made for? If we were to look at the last 10 years of shows produced by two of Canada’s major broadcasters, CBC and CTV, they are primarily targeted to Canadians and Europeans. But Canada, the champion of multiculturalism, should prioritize TV programs with themes and characters that appeal to its vast multiethnic community, sponsored and produced by its public and private broadcasters. That doesn’t seem to be the case. Between 2007 and 2018, there were just three TV shows that focused on multicultural themes: Little Mosque on the Prairie, Kim’s Convenience, and now, The Indian Detective.

In the last three years, The Indian Detective and Kim’s Convenience have targeted a non-traditional audience within the Canadian media space, which could indicate a trend followed by other such productions. Kim’s Convenience, a CBC show that first aired in 2016, tells the story of a Canadian-Korean family and their convenience store in Toronto. The show portrays the city’s transforming multicultural community, and the family’s attempt to “fit in.” Kim’s Convenience explores the mores of the family-run convenience store, where you can find everything—jokes, too. The show plays out the conflict between the first-generation Korean parents and their kids who grew up in Canada without accentuating it with overplay of accents and cultural difference—something The Indian Detective banks on.

Canada has tried in the past to promote multicultural and multiethnic broadcasting by giving special provisions to the ethnic broadcasting category. The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission’s (CRTC) Ethnic Broadcasting Policy of 1999 decided to allocate airtime to television and radio shows in third languages—that is, any language that isn’t English, French, or an Indigenous language—over the mainstream. But the CRTC’s broadcasting policy only applied to ethnic broadcasters, and encouraged them to create content in third languages. The only policy for non-ethnic public broadcasters—the public and major private broadcasters—is to dedicate up to 15 percent of their airtime toward ethnic programming, and which could be increased up to 40 percent by the conditions of the licence. The provision to incorporate ethnic programming remains a minor part of the overall policy, which is strictly focused on promoting a siloed concept of multicultural broadcasting. The CRTC policy has been relatively successful at adding a small set of private stations that includes broadcasters such as Omni TV, a Rogers Media production. Omni TV is a consortium of multicultural television programming which offers speciality channels broadcasted in languages such as Mandarin, Cantonese, Tagalog, and Punjabi. 

Specialized television satellite services such as Omni TV have been working hard to bring more multicultural TV options for Canada’s vast multiethnic population, but it is a small dent in the spectrum of broadcasting made possible by Canada’s public broadcasters such as the CBC. As a person of South Asian heritage, I consume media in Punjabi and Hindi, a large set of which is made possible by the CRTC’s funding for ethnic programming. Apart from a very small set of productions, most of it succumbs to advertisements by mortgage brokers, realtors, and real estate brokers—and some just roll all three into one program. The distinction between a news or current affairs program and an advertisement for a product or a service seems to blur into one long segment. Programming that was meant to promote a cultural dialogue between Canada’s vast ethnically diverse communities is being used for investment advice, for instance, in various languages. On the contrary, a successful example of multicultural programming is Hockey Night in Canada, which is a broadcast of hockey games with commentary in Punjabi.

In the United Kingdom, the BBC has long ago realized the need to incorporate multicultural programming, and has been promoting TV shows and media that appeal to its multicultural population on the British Isles. The BBC has a dedicated radio station for Asian audiences—the Asian Network—broadcasting throughout the day; the radio channels primarily cater to the U.K.’s large population of Asian heritage. A successful example of the BBC’s investment in multicultural programming can be traced through the career of Sanjeev Bhaskar, a prominent BBC presenter. Sanjeev is best known for Goodness Gracious Me, The Kumars at No. 42, India with Sanjeev Bhaskar, along with other regular appearances on BBC TV shows. He is among a long list of people of colour that have appeared on the network’s shows; other such figures include Mera Sayal, Idris Elba, Thandie Newton, and Gurinder Chaddha. The BBC’s production of multicultural situational comedy is well-established history that Canada could learn from. Some of the popular examples of multicultural comedy and drama from Britain include Real McCoy, Desmond’s, The Lenny Henry Show, Citizen Khan, and many others over the years.

Though multicultural programming options are thriving in Canada more than ever, it has resulted in a limited dialogue—broadcasting programs that many other Canadians can’t access, and vice-versa. But the recent productions of Kim’s Convenience and The Indian Detective are a positive trend that both major broadcasters should develop further. The CBC and CTV should rethink their strategy for Canadian television to remain relevant and keep up with the changing demographic of Canada. As the media landscape, both print and visual, faces its biggest financial challenge in years, there is a need to consider who consumes the TV shows and programs in Canada—and are Murdoch Mysteries or Heartland relevant to its multiethnic population?

Photo courtesy of CBC.

When I was a child, I used to confuse the title of Us Weekly magazine—a glossy about celebrities—as U.S. magazine, the entirety of America summed up in a glossy about celebrities. Twenty years later, the same can be done with Canada: The Story of Us. First-person plural pronouns are a messy affair, and it turns out that the CBC, rather than developing its own approach, borrowed a format from production company Nutopia that had previously been used to create America: The Story of Us. It shows.

Originally, I decided to watch The Story of Us because, as a white Canadian settler, it’s particularly important to be aware of national myth-making so that I can recognize my own role and understand how my country sees itself. (Or, at least, how the CBC sees us when it’s asked to make a glossy docuseries to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday).

But the series is both a failure in the way it navigates and frames history as well as the way it presents that history. Though each CGI-enhanced, this-is a-CRUCIAL-moment-in-the-fabric-of-Canada episode aims for action-movie-level tension, I couldn’t make it through more than four. Each one felt like the longest 44 minutes of my life. I say this having had broken bones, suffered severe food poisoning, and made many awful life decisions.

The series suffers from both momentary and major problems. Momentary: The War of 1812 is referred to, for example, as Canada’s “War of Independence.” No. Canada did not confederate until 1867, and, last time I checked, we are still a constitutional monarchy! The U.S. invaded, and groups of British colonists banded together with First Nations and fought to repel them. A war repelling an invading force is not a war of independence. It’s just a war. (One in which the British burned down the White House, which sadly does not receive play in this dull-as-dust episode.)

Major: Each episode features a blend of dramatic reenactment and commentary from experts and, no offence to handyman Mike Holmes or MMA fighter Georges St-Pierre, irrelevant celebrities. It’s hard to say, but the experts seem to have been fed lines from a script—lines that often echo the narration instead of adding anything interesting. For its part, the narration isn’t much better: Too little time is devoted to historical complexity, and too much time is devoted to underscoring, in case the viewers had not noticed it themselves, the deep and lasting importance of the moment at hand. The most egregiously ridiculous celebrity talking heads include Jim Balsillie and former Dragons’ Den panellist Michele Romanow who provide an “entrepreneurial” context for everything from the making of the Canada stove to the digging of the Welland Canal. Lesson one: Canada’s reason for existence was almost wholly mercantile. Lesson two: Our current government’s obsession with innovation is cut from the same cloth, and we’re just as unaware about it now as we were then.

In an effort to draw audiences in with star power and CGI, each episode feels incredibly slow and bogged down by extraneous contextualization. Had the structural defects of the Welland Canal been handled in narration, the series could have made more space to stop and question the overhunting of beavers or some tales from the seedy, racially complex and often violent history of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

The CBC had 10 hours, before commercials, to tell whatever stories it felt was important to our history. Those 10 hours could have come together with maps, visuals, and recreations to outline a cohesive timeline of Canada from well before settlers until now—something like the David Suzuki-narrated Geologic Journey, which tells the story of the geologic history of present-day Canada. Or they could have been used to challenge the dominant narratives of history we’ve learned in school, focussing on lesser-known figures, complicating our understanding of people like Sir John A. Macdonald, and challenging the difficult racist chapters of our past—like the Chinese head tax, the proposed ban on Black immigrants, or the Sixties Scoop. Or, as Metro columnist Vicky Mochama pointed out on her podcast with Ishmael Daro, Safe Space, all that time could have turned into many new Heritage Minutes.

Almost anything would have been better than shoehorning Canadian history into Nutopia’s format. Canada continues to celebrate the military and mercantile highlights of our past while overlooking much of our complex history—history that is more interesting and more important than much of what’s included in The Story of Us. When it comes to learning about our history, it’s time to change the frame—to focus less on celebrity and more on policy and everyday people; to move away from celebration, and toward education and understanding.

Gray, Kirchmeier, and another woman referred to as “Jane Doe”, who has been through a similar experience, are raising money for when they go to court. The Silence is Violence Legal Defense Fund is meant to even the playing field when it comes to court fees. As the group’s Indiegogo campaign page reads, “Our universities are multi-million dollar corporations. UBC recently announced raising more than 1.6 BILLION dollars.  Our universities have a team of lawyers employed to challenge our claims.” In the case of Jane Doe, the alleged abuser is a university professor, which means he is entitled to legal representation from a faculty association.

Since all women are students with precarious employment they cannot afford the same legal protection as their accused or their schools. In addition to the financial strain they continue to be re-victimized in the court system. All this knowing the odds are not in their favour. In the episode Gray’s lawyer says that out of an estimated 1,000 sexual assaults, only three are convicted. A lot of this has to do with victim blaming and the collective denial society has when it comes to the placating binary that bad things only happen to “bad”people.

On a positive note, since last week’s post, Dmitry Mordvinov was expelled, after several reports of sexual harassment and assault.

Donations to the Silence is Violence Legal Defense Fund can be made here.

A former This intern, Hillary Di Menna is in her second year of the gender and women’s studies program at York University. She also maintains an online feminist resource directory, FIRE- Feminist Internet Resource Exchange. 

Image from CBC’s preview of this week’s The Fifth Estate

For years the University of British Columbia (UBC) has told those speaking out against sexual assault to stay silent. “In January 2014, I reported a graduate colleague named Dmitry Mordvinov to the UBC for his unprofessional, sexual harassment behavior I observed,” writes Glynnis Kirchmeier on November 10 in a letter to colleagues, her former students, mentors, and friends. “I was told that the university would not speak with him, that as an alumna (of six weeks) I had no business taking an interest in the matter, and that I should be quiet.” After sharing her story about her report, Kirchmeier learned of other reported assaults and rapes made to a variety of UBC administration members, all involving the same man. Nothing had been done.

Alana Boileau, a resident in the accused’s on-campus housing described the misogynistic atmosphere she lived in (maintained through the alleged  behaviour of Mordvinov’s and others). In an article for Guts Magazine, Boileau talks about men threatening women, verbal and physical bullying directed at women, rape “jokes” (threats), and cases of rape.

“UBC stated that they appreciated my concerns over and over, but ghosted away when I demanded to know a plan or timeline for assessing Mr. Mordvinov’s misconduct,” writes Kirchmeier. “Meanwhile, he continued to travel using UBC’s money, and representing UBC at conferences as a scholar in good standing.”

UBC has since arranged for a Non-Academic Misconduct Committee Hearing. Kirchmeier says her report and the evidence of at least one of his alleged rape victims has been excluded. Three of the 20-plus committee members attended the meeting, which had no staff observer or official minutes taken. Until the UBC president comes to a decision, Mordvinov remains a student in good standing.

Monday November 23 CBC’s The Fifth Estate will lifestream an episode including their investigation into UBC’s response to the reports made against Mordvinov as well as rape culture, and how victims of rape are treated in court. The episode will include Kirchmeier.

A former This intern, Hillary Di Menna is in her second year of the gender and women’s studies program at York University. She also maintains an online feminist resource directory, FIRE- Feminist Internet Resource Exchange.

This Throwback Thursday looks back on a time when journalism first saw the chilling signs of a “slow dissolve” as told by writer Mark Starowicz. He explained the need for exclusively Canadian-owned radio and television broadcasting and suggests where it needs to grow to achieve this. He believed our culture was disappearing into that of the U.S.. It’s a familiar feeling as we learn CBC lost its rights to Hockey Night in Canada to Rogers and will “no longer compete for professional sports rights.” Still, Starowicz speaks fondly about Canada’s will and strength when our cultures are tested. Hopefully, we will see these beliefs represented again.

one of the targets is an old favourite—the CBC.

If you search hard enough, tucked away in the 111 pages of unrelated motions, you’ll piece together the government’s plan to tighten control over crown corporations. Via Rail and Canada Post are among the 49 companies threatened, but the bill’s implications on the CBC could severely compromise democracy. As a crown corporation, the CBC is funded by the government but maintains independence similar to a private company. But now the government wants control over salary and contract negotiations so it can cut costs and thus taxes. This undermines unions’ right to negotiate and threatens the media’s independence.

Conservative MP, Pierre Poilievre put it this way: “I am not here to take marching orders from union bosses. I represent taxpayers and, frankly, taxpayers expect us to keep costs under control so that we can keep taxes down. It is for those taxpayers that we work. Not union bosses.”

So the government is just looking out for Canadians, right? They’re acting in our best interest so we can save money.

Not everyone’s buying it. Sure, Canadians are an apathetic breed, but does the government honestly think we’re that naïve?  We’re supposed to believe the CBC’s content will be independent while Stephen Harper dictates each journalist’s salary? We’re supposed to believe he won’t reward those who report favourably on the government? This isn’t just about the money, Mr. Harper, is it? It’s about control.

And it’s control Harper’s been tactfully garnering for years.

Take, for example, the feds’ letterhead re-design. In 2009, the Conservatives changed government stationary from “Government of Canada” to read “Harper Government”. It’s subtle, but the message is significant; this is Harper’s Canada—not yours. When public servants finally did approach the Canadian Press about the Harper-centric rebranding, they did so off the record “for fear of retribution”.

When Harper made office in 2006, he introduced the tightest media censorship system parliament had ever seen. Reporters couldn’t access even basic information until it was vetted by the communications and consultations unit of the Privy Council Office.

Already at the CBC, the board of directors (which the government appoints) is stacked with conservative cronies. Eight of eleven directors are Conservative Party donors, including the chair Rémi Racine who gave $1,200 last year. To stay on the board, directors have to maintain “good relations” with Heritage Minister James Moore and his staff—another of Harper’s initiatives.

And some MPs have tried to topple the CBC completely, gathering signatures to support either cutting all funding to the CBC or selling the company. The $1.1 billion annual fund, they said, gives the broadcaster an unfair advantage over competitors, and of course, an unfair burden on tax-payers.

But this latest motion is the biggest blow to press freedom yet, with the most backlash, too. Because, well, it’s hard to maintain the guise of a democracy with a state-run media.

What if, for example, the NDP was the government of the day and tabled this same motion. Would the Conservatives not accuse them of being communist or Marxist? It’s true we associate state-controlled media with nations like China and the former Soviet Union—countries that tend to have weak economies and poor human rights records. And of course, there are exceptions, but I’m not sure Canada is one of them.

The federal government boasts for being a leader in human rights. But last week, 83 UN member countries agreed Canada human rights record isn’t good enough and asked for big improvements. Sorry, Mr. Harper, but press censorship isn’t exactly a step in the right direction.

So maybe Harper really has become transparent. He’s lost his sly, secretive way of undermining democracy and everyone can see through it. At last, there’s serious outcry over Harper’s media control. Political activist group, Avaaz, is circulating a petition which already has more than 50,000 signatures. Now that we’ve cut through the political speak, the onus is on us to not only call bull-shit but do something about it.

ASSIGNMENT Watch the fledgling Sun News Network, infamously nicknamed “Fox News North,” for eight hours. Note distinguishing characteristics, rate credibility and journalistic bona fides, and measure decibel levels of hosts’ shouting. Hypothesize audience size and composition. Compare and contrast with American forerunner Fox News. Administer wine as needed.

4:00 PM The Caldwell Account with host Theo Caldwell. Ten seconds in and there’s a veiled reference to ladies being gentler creatures, free from the oppressive bonds of thinkin’ and carin’ ’bout heavy stuff that matters. I begin jotting a tally of such events, and loosen my bustle so I don’t get the vapours.

4:08 PM Tiny, WASPy fellow sits behind a too-large desk burping sorta-ideas into the ether while people wandering into the background agree with him. Folksy phrases abound: “You know what really fries my ham?” Boy howdy! “Go pound sand!” Darn tootin’! Then he calls all Saudis “nefarious.” (Shortly after this experiment, The Caldwell Account was cancelled. Based on this observation, it is not missed.)

5:06 PM Preston Manning is a guest! I forgot that he sounds like a sad duck.

5:09 PM But don’t be a sad duck, Preston Manning! You have your very own think tank now. And according to that think tank, Canada is becoming more conservative. Just ask the 1,000 elderly people who actually pick up their landline telephones whom Preston Manning called and asked.

5:11 PM Host Charles Adler (his show is called Charles Adler) keeps calling Manning by his full name. Maybe he doesn’t know what title to give him, so it’s safest to just say the whole thing. That, or Manning requested it. Both of these ideas please me.

5:17 PM A commercial: a bunch of hot female Sun News Network anchorbabes. One says, “Finally, a news channel that lets me be me.” There we go again, us womens, confusing our news broadcasts with our tampons.

5:23 PM Joy Tiz—author of Obamanutz! A Cult Leader Takes the White House—comes on to discuss the scandalous underwear photography of congressman Anthony Weiner, and how the Democratic Party refuses to do anything about it (except, you know, call for an investigation. Boring!). She joins Adler “via Skype.” Take that, lamestream telephony! A little Googling reveals that Obamanutz! is self-published and includes 100 percent more zeds than necessary. Her website also notes (on the front page!) that she is the owner of “three magnificent and staunchly conservative German shepherds.”

6:04 PM Bryan Lilley hosts Byline. Finally, someone to make me genuinely mad rather than drowsily irritated. This hour, I will think and write the word “obfuscate” approximately once per minute, e.g., when Lilley uses the postal lockout to try to illustrate how unions are forcing their employees to support “radical organizations.”

6:10 PM A swoopy graphic of money going down a drain with the CBC logo on it!

6:34 PM Former Stephen Harper chief of staff Guy Giorno asserts that politics is not about left or right, or parties, but who stands up for “ordinary Canadians who don’t pick up placards and protest, they’re too busy working and taking care of their families.”

6:35 PM I pour a glass of wine.

6:42 PM According to this guest, whose credentials are unclear, the CBC is “atrophying money.” I think he means hemorrhaging. Also, he notes the CBC cut $30 million from its budget the previous year, so perhaps “atrophying” is exactly what he meant? More wine.

6:47 PM Brian Rushfeldt of Canada Family Action says TV is all left-wing propaganda. “Manipulation of emotions is what television does,” he says—and lo, a dictionary doth populate the word “irony.” The lefty TV shows referred to are Friends and Sesame Street. Never forget: A is for Abortion, B is for Bolshevik, C is for CBC.

7:00 PM Here it comes! The Source with Ezra Levant! Finally, the show I’ve been waiting for—Canada’s answer to Glenn Beck! He of the theatrics! And… he’s off tonight. Instead, please enjoy this dour substitute, who delivers a 15-minute rant about squeegee kids and panhandlers who wait to terrorize your shiny car with dirty water and crudely written signs.

8:14 PM In this neat little advertorial, Charles Adler is actually shilling a product sitting at the same desk from which he broadcasts his show. It’s some sort of nutritional supplement. Let’s all take it! With wine. After all, you have nothing to lose, since the next three hours will all be repeats of the shows you just watched.

9ISH A commercial advertising Sun News Network: “We’re out there. Far out there. Beyond the reach of the television police.”

10ISH More repeats. By the way, where are all the hot chicks “being themselves”? Have not seen even one sexy anchor getting down with her neo-liberal self.

MIDNIGHT OR THEREABOUTS I am done. And glad. So glad. Thank the TV gods that we are so bad at this—this making of polemics, this dividing of loyalties, this unpacking of prejudices masquerading as argument. We, as a nation, appear mercifully ill-suited to the task.

CONCLUSIONS Be unafraid of Sun News Network, lefty elites: there is so little there there. Was watching Sun TV News funny? At times. But mostly it was a little sad, a little pitiful. Sound and fury signifying … not nothing, but worse—just more sound and fury. A sad duck eating its own tail.

RAW DATA COLLECTED:
Incidents of thinly veiled racism: 6
Incidents of not-at-all veiled misogyny: 3.5
Self-congratulatory statements by Sun News personalities: 4
Unions are scary! 5
Artists want all your money! 8
Bottles of wine consumed: 0.75

Details of Invisible Publishing Titles. (L-R: Bats or Swallows, Ghost Pine, Fear of Fighting, This American Drive, Rememberer, The Art of Trespassing.)

Even when it’s not faced with an uncertain digital future, the publishing industry occupies a very uncomfortable place at the intersection of art and commerce. “Intersection” may not be the right word; it’s more like art is one end of a teeter totter and money is the other, with publishing in the middle, trying to make sure neither side bounces too hard or falls off or knocks the whole thing over. It’s a tough act.

Enter Invisible Publishing. Started in 2007 in Halifax by pals Robbie MacGregor, Nic Boshart, and Megan Fildes, Invisible chucked out the teeter-totter in favour of one giant sandbox. It’s a collective, in that beautiful old lefty way; they’ve just officially incorporated as a non-profit, though that term seems a little dry for a group that has so much fun together. The three chiefs have titles, sort of: Robbie is publisher, Megan is art director, and Nic, who has decamped to Toronto, is president, a title he can’t quite say with a straight face. They all have other jobs; Nic works at the Association of Canadian Publishers, Megan as production designer at Halifax’s The Coast, and Robbie spends his days at the Halifax Public Library—which means they don’t depend on Invisible to pay their rent. In fact, Invisible doesn’t pay them at all.

That’s right: they spend their evenings making books because they want to. And that sets the tone for the whole enterprise. They don’t publish books for authors, they publish with authors; writers can participate as much as they like, as can just about anyone else who’s keen to be a part of Invisible. So people offer to help. Jenner Brooke-Berger, for example, volunteered to read the slush pile and ended up doing promo and editing. Sacha Jackson, an editor, tackled marketing. And Sarah Labrie made an e-reader case for one of Invisible’s book covers. They even have a manifesto (not a mandate, a manifesto), which includes these lines: “We are collectively organized, our production processes are transparent. At Invisible, publishers and authors recognize a commitment to one another, and to the development of communities which can sustain and encourage storytellers.” Publishing as communal act: what a brilliant idea.

Speaking of brilliant, perhaps the most important part is the work they do. The folks at Invisible publish smartly: award-winning design; a forward-thinking and successful focus on e-books, complete with a super-smart blog; distribution and marketing savvy; and, most important, a discerning eye for talent. Commercial viability isn’t Invisible’s primary concern; good writing is. They’ve published 14 books, including Devon Code’s In a Mist, Stacey May Fowles and Marlena Zuber’s Fear of Fighting, and Ian Orti’s L (and things come apart), which recently won CBC’s audience-choice Bookie award. Invisible’s most recent release is about Montreal band the Dears.

Make no mistake: publishing is no picnic these days. Books are having a tough go of it in an age where people expect to get information for free. No one is in publishing for the money, but Robbie, Nic, and Megan take their labour of love one step further and make publishing a vehicle for creating community. With that, Invisible proves that publishing is not down for the count—not in the least.

A protester at a Vancouver demonstration calling for Canadian al Jazeera journalist Dorothy Parvaz to be freed by Syria's government. Photo by al Jazeera/Isaac Oomen.

I’m sitting in a room surrounded by hundreds of people, kindred spirits, a number of whom would normally not cross paths. Chiselled-faced anchors sit side by side with journalists who have been exiled from their homes around the world.

Then a series of startling images jolt me up in my seat. Footage of riot police in full gear, faces covered, knocking journalists to the ground, along with demonstrators. A news photographer tells a story of being shot with a rubber bullet. This isn’t Gaza City or Cairo. It’s Toronto, during the G20 Summit in June 2010.

A few minutes later, a voice emanates from above, directly from Cameroon. It’s the brother-in-law of Cameroonian journalist Bibi Ngota, who died in prison. He’s listening in on cellphone and recording the evening’s events on his end, to be broadcast on radio later.

It was a powerful moment at a gala organized by the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, a group that got its start 30 years ago. The organization was appalled at the kidnapping and murder of media workers during the bloody civil wars in Latin America of the 1980s. After a few decades and a couple name changes later, the CJFE has become enormously ambitious, mixing together high principles with clear-eyed pragmatism. The group’s president, a committed unionist, thanks a major bank for supporting its work building connections with Latin American journalists. Some of those journalists are here tonight.

Throughout it all, CJFE has avoided the false dichotomy that afflicts groups working on human rights internationally: that injustice only exists “over there.”

At home, CJFE has fought hard to broaden press freedom in Canada. It’s zeroed in on overreaching libel cases meant to silence journalists. It’s campaigned for more open access to information laws and is now pushing for an inquiry into the actions of police during the G20 Summit. Each year it reminds us that, even on our own doorstep, journalists can be targets of violence, naming an award after Tara Singh Hayer. Hayer was an outspoken Canadian journalist and editor of Vancouver’s Indo-Canadian Times who had been critical of Sikh extremism, and was murdered for those views in 1998.

Internationally, the group has broadened in its scope from Latin America to all corners of the globe. CJFE created a program for exiled journalists, lobbies for the release of detained media workers, and now runs what the group calls the world’s largest free-expression network, IFEX (International Freedom of Expression Exchange), which monitors abuses in over 60 countries.

Whether it’s drug cartels or corrupt regimes, CJFE has (often against the odds) tried to hold the powerful to account at home and abroad, firmly believing that democracy rises and falls based on the freedom of its media.

In 1999, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission took a hard look at the then-burgeoning internet. They then did what many Canadians would consider a very un-CRTC-like thing: they decided not to regulate it.

That may come as something of a surprise, as we tend to think that if the CRTC has a thing, it’s regulating stuff. They are, after all, the people known primarily for “CanCon” rules, the quotas that dictate that a certain percentage of programming on Canadian radio and television is made in Canada.

Yet at the time, the Commission’s logic for not touching the web was twofold. First, it felt that the bulk of material online consisted “predominantly of alphanumeric text,” and thus simply wasn’t theirs to regulate; second, it seemed Canadians were both consuming and making lots of Canadian content just fine on their own.

Eleven years later, the internet is a different place. The big change is that, whether on YouTube or the sites of Canadian TV networks, we are watching millions of videos a day. What’s more, we also have unfettered access to TV and film through online services like iTunes, and, since September, streaming video through the U.S.based Netflix. With this sudden online expansion of our entertainment and cultural choices, it may be time for Canada to not only change its approach to regulation, but the entire CanCon concept itself.

Though always contentious, the need for CanCon in our culture’s most dominant medium, TV, has compelling evidence behind it. Except for Hockey Night in Canada, the top 20 most-watched shows in Canada are all made in America. Though there are many reasons why, money is the big one. The pilot episode for ABC’s Lost was widely rumoured to have a budget of around $12 million. That’s as much as or more than many Canadian dramas get for an entire season. The disparity in financial backing—and, consequently, in cultural influence—is often stark. Legitimate debate rages over whether regulation is the best way to solve this gap, but the dominance of American media is likely to increase following the arrival this September of streaming-video service Netflix, allowing users to watch movies and TV shows on their PCs or, with the right equipment, TVs. The growing service already has 15 million subscribers in the U.S., and the company has become so well-known that even Ottawa-based Zip.ca has for years advertised itself as Canada’s Netflix.

But because Netflix delivers content over the web, it’s not subject to any CanCon regulation by the CRTC, and is under no obligation to deliver Canadian content. Similar services from Apple, Microsoft, and Sony are also free to sell and rent whatever they please. Because it’s relatively easy to license Canadian content, and because Canadians will watch it, most services do launch with some Canadian shows and music. But as more and more of these services spring up, Canadians will have increasing access to online broadcast channels untouched by CanCon requirements.

The answer, it would seem, would be to regulate them. When the CRTC initially chose to leave the web alone, it did so because it felt the market was doing an adequate job of protecting Canadian interests. But a decade later, market economics have done what they always do: they created a link between capital and cultural clout, and wealthy American giants like Netflix and Apple will soon have even more influence over what we watch.

What’s more, if media is the fodder for the conversations we have on Facebook and Twitter about the contemporary moment, it’s hard not to talk about those ubiquitous American shows. If you want to chat about body issues, it’s Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks you talk about. The web is a global conversation, and in a world in which U.S. cultural production is everywhere, American culture often becomes our shared reference point.

But even amidst this changing landscape, regulating the web is not the answer. In fact, the cyclical relationship between web hype and pop culture means that regulation is far less effective than relevance. CanCon was effective in a world with a few limited TV channels to choose from; the nearly limitless bandwidth of the web has changed the game.

To become more present in Canadian culture, Canadian media must provide its own fodder for online chatter, links, and debate. What this means is that rather than regulating the delivery system, we need to fund homegrown arts and culture to ensure the internet pipe into every home is filled with high-quality Canadian content.

Forget the free-marketeers’ response that “Canadian media should stand on its own two feet.” We need to acknowledge that the web has expanded our cultural choices well beyond Canadian borders. For Canadians to have and keep our own points of reference that speak to our own issues, we must fund them so that, placed side by side with American or British counterparts, there is no reason to click away.

Fortunately, this path has a precedent. Recent examples from television like Corner Gas and Being Erica prove that when Canadians are given high-quality programming from their own backyards, they will flock to it. In the face of the web and massively expanded competition from across the world, Canada must continue to invest in its own cultural industries if it too wishes to be part of that global conversation.