Want to 'watch Canadian' in the trade war? Here's why that's so hard

Florida oranges. American cheese. Even bourbon. It seems nothing is beyond the newfound patriotic urge to shun American products amid the growing U.S.-Canada trade war.

But after years or purposefully enmeshing our various industries, buying Canadian is easier said than done. 

Nowhere, it turns out, is that more evident than in film and television. 

Canadians have "spent a lot of time figuring out how to attract other countries to us," said Tonya Williams, founder of the Reelworld Screen Institute. And so the Americans, in particular, "have slowly kind of seeped into every part of our culture." 

According to the Canadian Media Producers Association, English-language domestic films made up 1.4 per cent of the national box office in 2023-24. But Canada's reliance on U.S. entertainment is nothing new.

The reasons, Williams says, are varied. Aside from Quebec's successful French-language output and the National Film Board's early international acclaim, a star system in this country is lacking. Films are rarely promoted to the same level as their American counterparts, Canadian actors are rarely made famous here and, due to poor messaging, audiences struggle to tell which movies are even Canadian. 

But worse is the general apathy toward Canadian content. Outside of government organizations, there hasn't been much grassroots push to build a robust entertainment industry when America's is so prodigious, and their culture perceived to be so close to our own. 

Williams thinks that's changing because of the newly antagonistic relationship. 

"I think the will is there now in Canada," she said. "I don't think any country should be so reliant on another country that its own economy could crumble, you know, because of what happens [there]."

Canada's reliance started early, says filmmaker and historian Caelum Vatnsdal. 

After an early start during the silent era, the industry here was marked by years of under-funding and neglect. The difficulties of shooting in Canadian weather and wilderness was part of the problem, though other countries — Germany, England, France, Japan — managed to start up fledgling, and even thriving, industries of their own.

Canada was also hobbled by American-made obstacles. We sit astride the world's longest border with the world's biggest pop-culture exporter, with whom we share a language. And given that, even to many Canadians, our culture seemed virtually indistinguishable, there was a general lack of interest in building a robust film industry of our own.

That indifference led to the Canadian Co-operation Project.

Running from 1948-1958, it was designed to largely keep the Canadian government from laying claim to its own box office, Vatnsdal says. Because the major theatre chains here were foreign-owned at the time, Canadian-produced films were hobbled from the start and kept from competing with American releases. Meanwhile, nearly $20 million in yearly theatrical revenue largely went south of the border.