A Canadian film or television program can meet the test for Canadian content and still struggle to reach viewers. The CRTC has addressed both parts of that problem through Broadcasting Regulatory Policies 2026-95 and 2026-96, released on May 21, 2026. One policy establishes a framework for making Canadian and Indigenous programs easier to discover. The other recalibrates the expenditures that qualifying broadcasters and streaming businesses must direct toward Canadian programming. For producers, these are connected decisions about financing, ownership and visibility, rather than an assurance that any particular project will be funded or promoted.
Under Policy 2026-96, the new expenditure framework applies to specified private Canadian broadcasting groups and unaffiliated online streaming groups with at least $25 million in annual Canadian broadcasting revenues. It sets a Canadian programming expenditure requirement of 25% for qualifying private Canadian broadcasting groups and 15% for qualifying unaffiliated online groups, with the streamers' existing 5% base contribution included in that 15%. Businesses below the threshold are outside these new expenditure obligations. The CRTC has also distinguished groups with revenues of $100 million or more from medium-sized groups, allowing the latter greater discretion in allocating their required spending. That distinction matters because the policy doesn't assume that every broadcaster has the same scale, programming responsibilities or financial capacity.
Large groups face more directed requirements. The CRTC's framework allocates at least 30% of their Canadian programming expenditures to enhanced production partnerships in which Canadians retain majority copyright ownership, with arrangements for amounts not spent through those partnerships. Large Canadian broadcasting groups also have spending requirements connected to news, while the framework addresses French-language programming and official language minority communities. These aren't merely questions of how many Canadian credits a production carries. Copyright ownership can determine whether producers retain longer-term value in programs they help create. The policy should therefore matter to negotiations about financing and intellectual property as much as to annual regulatory compliance.
Policy 2026-95 deals with a different obstacle. A production can be available on a service and still be practically invisible to audiences navigating large digital catalogues. The CRTC has established discoverability principles and expects measurable commitments to be built into tailored conditions of service. It also proposes industry work on better Canadian-content metadata. Clearer information about a work's origins, language and cultural context can help services identify it and help audiences find it, but the framework doesn't guarantee any program a specific position in search results or recommendations.
These decisions aren't a single immediate payment instruction for every streaming platform. The CRTC expressly contemplates later proceedings to establish tailored conditions of service for affected undertakings. Producers, broadcasters and cultural organizations should read the original policies, identify the provisions that actually apply to their circumstances and watch those subsequent conditions before treating headline percentages as binding obligations on an individual enterprise. The larger cultural point is that a financing framework alone can't solve discoverability, and discoverability without opportunities to make work offers creators very little. The regulator is now asking the system to address both.