How CanCon disrupted trade talks, and Coyote vs. Acme in theatres is a win for all

As a kid in the early 2000s, I joined a scrappy new video site called YouTube. We were girls creating content for other girls, but with our growing success came new rules from the man in charge. There was no reason to believe that anything dangerous was going on? No reason until he was taken away in handcuffs. I'm Lauren White, and from CBC's Split Screen, this is There Goes My Childhood, available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. It's been a wild week as the Canada U.S. Trade War has really ramped up. Things went sideways at the negotiating table late last week, and Canada walked away from talks for a wide range of reasons, including can-con requirements. I'm Amel Niazi, sitting in for El Amin Abdelmakhmoud. This is commotion. I've got Vas Bednar here to talk us through it. Welcome back to the show, thanks for having me. Okay Vasso, as I mentioned one reason that Canada reportedly walked away from the table was due to the U.S.'s demand that Canada drop can-con requirements for U.S. streamers like Netflix to promote Canadian content. The Globe and Mail spoke with a senior government source who said that the demand came at the 11th hour and was unexpected. Let's start there because I hear you feel this shouldn't have been unexpected, why? Well every year the U.S. Trade Representative publishes this super long report about trade irritants that they have with other countries. A list of demands written on the palm of their hands. On March 31st of this year, they put out the 2026 report, and there's a whole Canada section and, you know, surprise, surprise, cultural content is listed there. They've set it out loud, they forecasted it. They shouted out a kind of particular supplementary bill that Quebec has, that sort of echoes that those federal efforts on online streaming. And if you go back and I've only looked at the past 10 years, but cultural requirements for Canada come up almost every year. So, this stuff is kind of hiding in plain sight, what's more surprising is to hear that we may not have been ready for it or that we weren't kind of brace to defend it. I'm surprised, people are surprised, that's where my surprise is. Okay, so let's explain a bit more what the U.S. streamers are actually required to do right now. I know there's a thing about boosting, quote, discoverability of Canadian content, including French language content. And I see it when I'm, when I'm, you know, looking at Netflix, there's always like a lot of Canadian and French stuff right at the top. So what does discoverability mean here? So actually the CRTC is still a little bit hazy on that. They had a ruling in March of this year where they sort of forecasted, okay, we're starting to get down to brass tax, but there's still some openness. There's more of a dialogue with these streaming platforms, I would say, in that the CRTC is basically asking, we want to know and learn from what you're doing. So if that means, you know, sharing statistics on what was viewed, you know, what was seen on kind of a homepage versus what was actually watched or consumed or how long people are watching and listening, that's part of the bargaining here. So we're not kind of at the total finish line, but those talks have, you know, progressed quite a bit. And again, our American friends, trade partners, frenemies have been flagging that they just don't like this for quite some time. They don't like having to push the Canadian content up to the top. I wonder if it's less about the cultural policy, which is like also a function of past sovereignty fights, which is kind of amazing. And if it's really just resisting any kind of algorithmic infringement, right? Because what we're saying is we have these particular values and you're going to have to amend how you operate here and maybe at its core, that's more the resistance that we're seeing versus, you know, an American streaming company being fundamentally opposed to Canadian content. Right. Right. The tech companies are very secretive about how the algorithm works and they don't necessarily want to have to share that and, you know, change it for us. We've characterized it so well, they're secretive. And when we signed Kuzma 1.0, we said, "Great idea." We will, we agree to a lot that has sort of inhibited our ability to regulate the digital economy in a compelling way. And we basically said, "Yeah, we won't hold platforms accountable for what's on them. Algorithms can stay a black box, code is proprietary, all good, all good." That was kind of the downward, you know, kind of end of techno optimism. We're also one in a very different place, different attitude towards technology companies and they're also a lot bigger and even more powerful than they were last time around. So you think it's the tech companies that are really pushing this requirement to be dropped so hard? Yeah. I really do. I think that monopoly, oligopoly, the corporate concentration does become a democracy and freedom and sovereignty issue and Canada feels that in real time and Canada has experienced that before and will probably experience it again. Well, speaking of that, you know, we've sort of been dealing with this on an ongoing basis with Bill C18. That was when the Canadian government passed a law asking companies to pay Canadian news outlets for sharing or linking to their content online and in return, Facebook and Instagram, we're like, we'll just actually block all new sources and I'm any Canadian listening, we'll know how frustrating that is. So do you think that that's a factor as into how this is playing out as well, that Bill and how it turned out? I think Canada expects to be bullied. I mean, when Meta did that to us, what is that but a form of corporate bullying? It's a flex of their corporate power and a reminder of that curatorial power that they have. I wonder if our annoyance is changing a little bit and shifting from being frustrated with the government for maybe designing a policy that wasn't universally palatable to now feeling like, yeah, actually, the state should be able to govern the information environment and the integrity of that. And we want maybe Facebook Meta to step up a little bit more and do a better job in that regard. But I'll also say all of those kind of digital legislative levers we've been designing and trying to pull since Kuzma online news, online streaming, digital service tax, which we abandoned, et cetera, et cetera, they are universally weak because they are a byproduct of Kuzma 1.0 because we're doing the best we can and the best we can for Canada right now is asking large foreign tech companies very, very nicely to comply with our regime and big surprise. It doesn't always work. Well, at least it was very, very nicely. So the Canadian government has announced counter tariffs on more than 700 different US products, but those are physical goods. They haven't really talked about anything in the digital space. What do you make of that? Well, I mean, digital services, probably everyone kind of wants them to stay flowing freely. I think we're so digitally dependent on the US that firing a shot like that, you know, where we're very weak, our systems are so intertwined with theirs, even something like CBC gem is about 98% Amazon web services in Microsoft. I mean, we laugh, but that's the truth, right? The digital infrastructure that Canada, that our economy is built on tends to be American and that creates a new kind of, I think it times very scary dependence and a dependence that can be weaponized by a berserk kind of not ally anymore. So part of Canada moving forward, I think, has to be us rebuilding and kind of building alternatives and building up more kind of security and resilience and sovereignty in that regard. But digital, it's invisible, it's everywhere and nowhere at the same time. And that's probably why it's absent from that list. I like to quote President Trump sometimes in this one way and sort of say everything is computer because like, autos are also digital and have digital elements and software and are built on something, but we see them as something distinct from technology when tech kind of runs through all of it. Yes. Everything is computer. That is true. So what are you going to be keeping your eye on as these talks continue? I mean, I'm going to be keeping my eye on all things digital. And of course, I think we should be beating back Kuzma 1.0 and fighting for better provisions and fighting for our ability to regulate our digital economy. The fact that our very sovereignty in that regard is framed as a trade irritant. It's such delicious obscene language, right? Like, our ability to govern the economy, we have needs to be upheld and protected and we can't give that away. And I'm glad that Quebec has ended up being this little kind of firebrand for us. Like, nobody puts back in a corner. Nobody puts Canada in a corner, either. Always quote dirty dancing to me. Okay. Before you go, Vass, I got to get your thoughts on a big story that broke yesterday. Metta agreed to make changes to Facebook and Instagram, including time limits for teens, paying up to $18 billion US in a settlement. And it's all part of this, you know, suit that's designed to say that these companies have made their apps to be addictive to kids. What was your reaction when you first heard about the settlement? Thank you to the American Corps. I mean, the courts have been really strong. This is a novel kind of argument that we're seeing, you know, work and have results. That technology is intentionally designed to be addictive and to cause harms. So for all of Canada's supplementary efforts to reduce those harms or introduce accountability, the fact that it's proven in court, I think, also helps with public understanding, public opinion and maybe even making it more politically palatable to continue to push back against the digital power of these platforms. And I should say that despite the settlement, meta has not admitted to any wrongdoing. No, no. And it won't change meta here, right, in Canada. Right. That's a good point. Do you think though that these are types of restrictions, you know, apparently it's like two hours a day for teens and then also blocking usage from midnight to 6 a.m.? Is that going to work or is the genie well out of the bottle here? It's not nothing, but I think it's a reminder that given the choice, these companies would rather, quote unquote, self-regulate, make their own decisions rather than comply with. If Canada designed that regime and said, "Hey, could you just limit things for two hours for kids and block from midnight?" I think we would see a lot of money and a lot of power thrown at resisting that imposition on their quote unquote freedom to design what they want to design and operate, how they want to operate. Well, it's all very interesting, Vass, and I really appreciate you talking us through it today. Thank you. Vass Bednar is the managing director of the Canadian Shield Institute. She's also the co-author of The Big Fix, how companies capture markets and harm Canadians, and she was here with us in Toronto. In a world where the news feels bigger, louder, and harder to make sense of, Canadians need more than headlines. Hi, I'm Karen C. Olin, news reporter and host of The Big Story Podcast. From world-shaping events to the everyday stories that spark debate, my team and I will explain what matters and why it matters to you. We're here to help you make sense of the news and give you the context you need for those kitchen table conversations, trusted, Canadian focused, curious. Listen to The Big Story, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Amel Niazi sitting in for El Amin Abdul Mahmoud. This is commotion. Well, if you're like me, you have been waiting for what feels like forever to finally watch Coyote versus Acme, I love looney tunes, I love watching it with my kids, and when I first heard about this movie, I was like, what a dream come true. But it almost didn't even see the light of day, and now it's finally here. It's been a real whirlwind. Adam Naaman and Paul Thompson are here to talk all about it with us. Welcome to commotion. Hey there. Thanks for having me. Paul, you're a fan of Wiley Coyote who spends his time trying to capture Roadrunner. Can you tell us what this new movie is about? Absolutely. It's about, well, first of all, it's a live action animation hybrid, and it takes place in a world where that hybrid is the norm. And basically, after years, maybe decades of trying to capture the Roadrunner, Wiley Coyote finally gives in to one of those commercials for a sort of mid-tier seeming law firm and sues the Acme Corporation for providing him with tools and gadgets that purport the help and catch his prey that in fact harm him and don't bring him closer to the goal. I love that. And the film is live action and animation, is that right? Yeah. It's a who-friend Roger Rabbit just better integrated. Okay. He's shot-spired. Well, let's watch a little bit of the trailer to get a sense of what's going on. Have you ever said a big stack of TNT on the road hoping to blow up your nemesis, but the detonator itself explodes? Have you ever pulled the rip cord of your parachute and only a bunch of silverware comes out? It's not your fault. Acme is evil. I mean, what is not to love their, Adam? What did you think about the movie? I enjoyed the movie very much. Yeah. I think that Violet Coyote is on the short list of the great characters in American fiction. Certainly, American entertainment is certainly one of the most human, you know, the striving, the failing, the constant, you know, industriousness. The movie respects this. I mean, it sort of places this sort of eternal villain in the position of the hero because these are people who understand their material. They understand the original looney tunes, not just the physics of it, but, you know, the metaphysics of it. I mean, the looney tunes were always American existentialism. They demolished the fourth wall. They make the audience complicit. They had references to classical literature. Here you have in this film, you know, Project Cicifist, which is, you know, a way of talking about the eternal struggle that the Coyote has. So I'm delighted to see that the people who made this movie made it with such love and knowledge of their source material, which has not always been the case in how this intellectual property gets renovated by Warner Brothers? Paul mentioned Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I'm thinking also of Space Jam, some of the great live action animation movies. How does this one compare to those? Well, I think I'm certainly shot fired at Who Framed Roger Rabbit. There was an amazingly integrated movie for 1988. Yeah. I mean, here I think technically the movie is very proficient, but again, it's more of the spirit of it. I mean, in something like Space Jam, the idea was that bugs and the characters were being dragged into this kind of cool zone by Michael Jordan. And this movie goes the complete opposite direction. This is a world that is kind of enthralled to the rules and the philosophy of the cartoons. Even the ACME Corporation is a kind of cartoon version of late capitalist villainy. So I think it compares very favorably to movie like Space Jam, which was just an opportunity to make a soundtrack, you know, this is a narrative. And it was a bang in soundtrack. It was. The Monsters Forever. But when you compare To Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which is true, it's also very much a kind of noir plot. It has an actual kind of courtroom legal thriller detective narrative, which I think is a real shout out to Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a movie that is not just an excuse to merchandise characters, but, you know, a story with stakes. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I actually showed it to my eight-year-old recently and he loved it. Well, this movie was completed years ago, but in 2023 Warner Brothers Discovery shelved it to claim a $30 million tax ride off. You wrote about it at the time. Let's talk a bit about what went down and how we got here, because it's been quite the roller coaster. Yeah, I mean, Hollywood history is a history of messy and potentially dishonest accounting of what happens in the production of films. And so, there's a long history of studios shutting down production, delaying release, planting stories, and 30s and 40s tabloids about actors and directors being difficult and whatnot. But it's very, very rare that what happens here happens, which is a completed film, is shelved simply because they say, "Hey, it benefits us on a tax level for this to not come out." So, the best reporting at the time indicates that the movie, which had a reported production budget of around $70 million, was decided to be shelved by Warner at the time and was screened for other distributors and studios who could potentially acquire it. But there is a general understanding among those buyers about the finances of what goes on in these deals. And they were shocked when they learned that Warner was not budging from a very high price, which in short, indicates a lack of good faith in trying to get the movie a home for distribution. So then, it does eventually find a distributor with ketchup entertainment. Were you surprised that it did eventually come out? I was a little bit surprised, but obviously, with as with all American corporate thinking, there's a lot of myopia, there's a lot of short-term thinking. So what made sense for the balance sheet in 2022 and 2023 is not necessarily the case now. And it's also one of those through the Looking Glass things where the very shelving of a movie creates public goodwill and interest, which will benefit every financial stakeholder in the project. Yeah, and not just public goodwill and interest, but it contextualizes the narrative. I mean, the Warner Brothers cartoons were always self-reflexive. They always bit the hand that feeds a little bit, but now you have this movie about this kind of evil, repressive corporation, you know, mistreating their literally mistreating their own intellectual property behind closed doors, disappearing things downholes. The tagline for this is the movie Acme doesn't want you to see, and you don't have to read between the lines to have Acme be Warner's discovery in this case. And the Looney Tunes are in good company because David Zaslov, just two years ago, picked to fight with Clint Eastwood at 93, you know, barely letting Jure number two get a release either. So I think what Paul said about the public goodwill is there on behalf of this movie. And unfortunately, or paradoxically, it's goodwill on behalf of the Warner Brothers characters, but, you know, set against the studio and its mismanagement of those things, which is a really interesting tension to observe. Yeah, and it even says based on a true story, right? Based on a true story, yeah. Paul, what do you make of what Adam's saying there? Yeah, I think it's completely true. You know, Jure number two is a good connection. Maybe Zaslov just hates courtroom dramas. Yeah, seriously. Sorry, you know, good movies. Yeah, it could be that too. Paul, it also touches the. on some pretty deep themes around consumer culture. What do you think Wiley Coyote's character and his relationship to Akmi saying about all of that? - Well, I was really heartened and vindicated to learn that the project in the movies called Project Sisyphus. 'Cause when I wrote about this whole debacle several years ago, I wrote about Wiley Coyote as a very American Sisyphus. He's out there in the unpopulated West and he's trying and trying and trying to reach the seemingly impossible goal, but the less flattering aspect of it is he, like Americans, like Westerners, like all of us, is trying to abstract his really base animal urges through the collection of goods. So he's hunting his prey, but he's creating this web of legal entanglement and obligation and liability through the purchasing of what is funny and utter nonsense most of the time. So it's a very clear metaphor for, we can acquire anything we want, but we're still hunting prey at a certain level. - Yeah, it's like if Don Quixote ordered his wig mills from the factory, right? Like they are the cause of, they're supposed to be the solution to his problems with the cause of it. And there's a reason it's a post-war cartoon. And there's a reason that it's a sort of Pax Americana Madison Avenue cartoon. And the reason it takes place in New Mexico, I mean, this is where the Trinity test happened. This is Ra as well. Like all these little impact craters and puffs of smoke, it's kind of like modernity and the land, you know? 'Cause the whole idea of the road run in the cartoon is it's supposed to be like National Geographic. They have the species names. But he can't win by natural selection. So he defaults to these products. It has come up in says that they never, ever, ever work. I think the loony tunes are American existentialism. They're unpretentious about it. But it's a profound cartoon. And the movie, you know, gets that. It'll light-hearted, but deep-seated way. I think it's a serious subject. This reliance on products that we know don't work and are bad for us and that do not have our best interests at heart. It's not a topical movie. - Mm-hmm, Paul, I saw this very emotional clip from Will Forte talking about how he found out that the movie wasn't coming out. And he'd initially been waiting to have it screened. And his agent was going to let him know if it was going to go straight to streaming or get a theatrical release. And the very next day, they called and said, so it's not going into theaters. And he was like, okay, great, streaming. And they said, no, it's actually not coming out at all. And it was really hard to watch 'cause you could see how emotional he was about it. But it made me wonder if this is the type of thing we'll see more often as these companies shrink, as they create more monopolies. And as the economics of film continue to shrink and change. - Yeah, I mean, in a, again, fitting parallel with Coyote versus Acme, which on some levels about the abstraction of incentives and the confusion of who is actually benefiting and for what reason, I do think it's possible. But the economics of Hollywood right now make less sense to the public than ever with the rise of streaming, with the corporate commitment to streaming. The idea that audiences don't want to go see films and theaters is really a self perpetuated thing because it benefits these corporations for the value of their streamer to go up and up and up and up. And that's at the expense of actual box office receipts. So we're still gonna see how this looming merger shakes out. And I do think that that's going to have pretty catastrophic effects on a number of levels of production. But there is going to be pressure on these new companies to release more movies theatrically. That's been a big point of contention here in the States. And so I would expect fewer situations like Coyote versus Acme in the short term, but long term, yes, absolutely, especially as production ramps back up, we could see. We could see more stuff finished and never released, which is historically not only case. Adam, we know I think that there's still no way to make more money off a movie than release a commercially successful film in theaters that's marketed and sold well and that people pay exorbitant ticket prices for. I mean, in that sense, the fundamental truth still apply. There's just a lot of complication that kind of gets piled on top of that. What's interesting is this movie is being framed in some quarters as people have the duty of obligation to see it as if you're getting your shots in at Hollywood by buying tickets for the Hollywood New Release. And if it does well, I think it'll be a nice story. If it doesn't do well, I'd hate for the wrong lessons to be learned from it. And as a fan of the characters and the property, I just don't want the lesson to be that they're not viable because that seems to also be a self-perpetuating prophecy. Other than Space Jam, all the Looney Tunes live action movies have kind of failed. And as Goofy as it stands to say, it's not Bugs Bunny's fault, you know? It's not that the cartoons are built to last. And I think the fact that they still have that kind of satirical weight in this movie, the way that not just the coyote and the road runner, but the other characters get plugged into this Hollywood landscape that Paul described so aptly. It's amazing how well they suit it. And their commentary suits it, I think, you know, very tightly. - Well, very fascinating conversation and really appreciate you both chatting with us about it. Thank you. - Thanks for having me. - Thank you. - Adam Naaman is a film and TV critic whose work shows up in The Ringer and The Toronto Star. He was here with me in Toronto. He's also got a podcast about movies coming out next year, so keep an eye out for that. And Paul Thompson is the editor-in-chief of P.O.W. magazine. He was in LA and Coyote versus Akmi is out on Friday. And that's it for commotion today. I'm Amel Niazi sitting in for El Amin Abdel Mahmoud. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to CBC.ca/podcasts.