Official Minority Language Support

A key mandate for the Canada Media Fund (CMF) is to support official languages in minority settings. The CMF achieves this objective through a number of programs.

The Francophone Minority Program (FM) is designed to encourage the creation of projects that reflect the realities experienced by French-language communities living outside the province of Quebec. 

*All programs included

Funding to Francophone production outside of Quebec has risen to a five-year high at $12.8M and exceeded the mandated target of 10.0% of overall French funding by over 2 percentage points, for the second year in a row. The Francophone Minority (FM) Program contributed $10.7M and $2.1M came from the Performance Envelope (PE) program, Convergent Digital Media Incentive (CDMI), and Northern Incentive. 9 out of 37 minority language projects did not have FM program support. 

The Anglophone Minority Incentive (AMI) was established in 2013-2014 to create a predictable source of official minority language support for the English market in Quebec. 

*All programs included

Funding to English-language production in Quebec has risen to $18.4M, or 9.5% of English-language funding for 2016-2017, a five-year high for the second year in a row.  24.5% of this funding support came from the Anglophone Minority Incentive, now in its fourth year. 66.8% was committed from the PE program and the remainder of funding came from the English Point of View (POV) program and CDMI.

 

FRANCOPHONE MINORITY PROGRAM

This program is part of the CMF’s Convergent Stream; thus, projects funded through this program must include content to be produced for distribution on at least two platforms, one of which must be television and the other, digital media. Funding from this program is allocated according to a selective process, using an evaluation grid. A total of $11.2M was committed from the FM program for 2016-2017.

The FM program for production supported 229 television hours and 28 convergent projects with 26 digital media components in 2016-2017. Total budgets rose by $4.5M from last year to $38.9M in 2016-2017. Total budgets and hours funded show a five-year high for the program.  The average television budget per hour was $155K, declining from $228K last year. Documentaries received 44.2% of funding; Children’s & Youth received 33.0%, Variety & Performing Arts received 13.1%, and Drama 9.7%. A total of $530K was earmarked out of the FM program to support development of 14 projects.

The CMF, including the FM program, provided 28.0% of television project financing and 65.9% of digital media financing. Broadcasters provided a larger share of financing (47.0%) than CMF for television projects. Broadcasters also provided higher licence fees than required at 24.8% for digital media projects. TV5 licensed 10 projects and Radio-Canada licensed 9 projects, while TFO produced three and licensed one, Canal D licensed three, and RDS, TVA, and APTN licensed one each.

 

ANGLOPHONE MINORITY INCENTIVE

The program allocation of $4.5M, a $0.5M increase from 2015-2016, was fully subscribed in 2016-2017 and 12 projects were supported. AMI was formulated to supplement PE funding for television projects at a maximum of 15% of the budget or $0.9M, whichever is less. A total of 80.0% went to Drama, 12.1% went to Documentary, and 7.9% went to Children’s & Youth projects. Television budgets rose to a total of $62.9M, a 42.0% increase from 2015-2016.

Broadcasters provide a high level of financing in Anglophone Minority Incentive projects, compared to overall English-language television production. Distributors and foreign financiers provide small, but significant contributions.

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