I’ve talked about CanCon in regards to the Dead Air comic before, and how Canadian government regulations designed to foster a homegrown music industry impacted my time as a university radio DJ. Those rules about how much Canadian content has to be part of a station’s broadcast schedule are still in force today, (although changed somewhat), and it turns out that not everyone likes them.

Specifically, Bryan Adams. This isn’t really “news,” as the Canadian musician has been railing against CanCon since the early ‘90s. Adam’s problem with the system is that artists like him, who record and collaborate around the world, often discover that their music doesn’t count as CanCon because it fails to meet the strict criteria governing that definition.

Adams books studio time outside of the country and sings songs written by non-Canadians. That means he usually only meets one aspect of CanCon, which is that the track is performed by a Canadian. In the 1990s, he would have needed two more of the remaining three qualifiers for his music to be considered ‘Canadian’: recorded in Canada, lyrics written by a Canadian, or performed and broadcast live in Canada.

Today, he only needs one more of those, as rules have been relaxed—but not enough for Adams, who continues to argue that Canada is ignoring that the music industry has gone global, and as such CanCon is an antiquated standard.

I think what Bryan Adams has failed to realize is that CanCon is intended to help grow artists at home—and once they’ve left the nest and found international success, they probably don’t need the extra promotional and exposure opportunities it presents in the Canadian market. Or maybe he does understand that and just wants to blow the entire thing up because he already got his, and doesn’t care if a new artist from Ontario or Nova Scotia who isn’t able to record in Paris gets a leg-up in a very difficult industry.

Either way, this got me thinking about how differently Canada approaches the visual and written arts scene. From my limited understanding, most of the support that Canadian writers and artists receive is managed through grants, which must be applied for before creating anything, and which have their own restrictions and requirements.

Currently, there are no rules that state book stores in Canada have to stock Canadian creators. As far as I know, that’s never been on the table whatsoever. Why is that? What makes radio and television subject to broadcast rules so strict when publishing gets a free pass on its own distribution?

I’m not hinting that there’s some kind of conspiracy here, or ill-intent. It just seems as though the government has elected to economically foster one specific type of self expression over another.

This leads me to wonder what a CanCon requirement for comic books would do to help the scene. Take the grueling grant process out of the picture, and what could creators who aren’t all that good at paperwork achieve on a playing field that’s been leveled by increased bookshelf space at Canadian retailers, and more support for Canadian publishers?

We’ve never taken grant money in the production of any of our books here at Studio Alpaca. But not everyone has the kind of resources that we do, be they time or financial, to get a project off the ground—and not everyone is willing or able to go the crowd-funding route that has worked so well for us.

Do you think CanCon for comics would be helpful or harmful for creators, as well as for readers looking to discover new work that they might never have had the chance to stumble across in a shop?