# Media of Canada

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The media of Canada is highly autonomous, uncensored, diverse, and very regionalized. Canada has a well-developed media sector, but its cultural output—particularly in English films, television shows, and magazines—is often overshadowed by imports from the United States. As a result, the preservation of a distinctly Canadian culture is supported by federal government programs, laws, and institutions such as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
Canadian mass media, both print and digital, and in both official languages, is largely dominated by a "handful of corporations". The largest of these corporations is the country's national public broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which also plays a significant role in producing domestic cultural content, operating its own radio and TV networks in both English and French. In addition to the CBC, some provincial governments offer their own public educational TV broadcast services as well, such as TVOntario and Télé-Québec.
The 1991 Broadcasting Act declares "the system should serve to safeguard, enrich, and strengthen the cultural, political, social, and economic fabric of Canada". The promotion of multicultural media began in the late 1980s as multicultural policy was legislated in 1988. In the Multiculturalism Act, the federal government proclaimed the recognition of the diversity of Canadian culture. Thus, multicultural media became an integral part of Canadian media overall. Upon numerous government reports showing lack of minority representation or minority misrepresentation, the Canadian government stressed separate provision be made to allow minorities and ethnicities of Canada to have their own voice in the media.
Non-news media content in Canada, including film and television, is influenced both by local creators as well as by imports from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and France. In an effort to reduce the amount of foreign-made media, government interventions in television broadcasting can include both regulation of content and public financing. Canadian tax laws limit foreign competition in magazine advertising.

## Media consumption

According to data from the 2020 General Social Survey on Social Identity, Canadians use various news sources, including newspapers, magazines, television, radio, and the Internet. The Internet is the most popular method for following news at 80%, followed by television at 67%. Other sources include radio (40%), newspapers (36%), and magazines (11%).
People with a university degree are more likely to use the Internet, newspapers, and magazines for news. Specifically, 90% of university graduates use the Internet, compared to 46% using newspapers and 17% using magazines. Among immigrants, media usage for news increases the longer they have been in Canada. The survey shows that daily news consumption varies: 39% of immigrants who arrived in Canada 0 to 5 years ago, 40% for 6 to 10 years, 58% for 11 or more years, and 60% for those not immigrants.
Internet use is higher among younger individuals (15 to 34 years) at 95%, while those 55 years and older prefer television, with 88% following news on this platform. In the younger demographic, there are no gender differences for Internet use; however, in older age groups, more men use the Internet compared to women. Among those aged 55 and older, 67% of men and 59% of women use the Internet. Television viewership is higher among women in all age groups.

## History

The history of Canadian media performers goes back to the first days of radio. In the 1940s, the Radio Artists of Toronto Society (RATS) was formed. Radio performers in Montreal, Winnipeg, and Vancouver also organized to fight for artists' rights, working conditions, and better fees. In 1943, the Association of Canadian Radio Artists (ACRA) was formed as a loose national coalition of actors' groups. Over the years, ACRA evolved into the Association of Canadian Radio and Television Artists, followed by the Canadian Council of Authors and Artists, then the Association of Canadian Television and Radio Artists, and, in 1984, to the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, its present name.
The Canadian Broadcasting Act, historically and in its modern conception, is based on the fact that, since the start of the 20th century, it was important for broadcasters to ensure that information flowed freely and reflected the diversity of Canadian points of view, as opposed to the classic approach, which gives media owners more freedom to express their views. The Canadian broadcasting system as it exists today "would probably not exist if we had allowed the marketplace to regulate ownership rights."
In August 2015, the Canadian Media Guild, the union representing CBC journalists, became a registered third party in order to campaign for increased taxpayer funding of the CBC in the 2015 election. After the Liberal Party of Canada won the election, it increased taxpayer funding of the CBC by CA$150 million. In 2017, the federal government announced a five-year $50-million program to help struggling local newspapers. In 2018, it announced $595 million in tax credits to help struggling newspapers and television networks adapt to competition from online news sources.
In 2013, Maclean's wrote an article noting the influence that Quebecor and owner Pierre Karl Péladeau have on the Quebec media system. The article noted that Quebecor behaves like a counterpart to the federalist La Presse, owned by the Desmarais family. In November 2018, Unifor, the other major union for Canadian journalists, announced that it would campaign against the Conservative Party of Canada in the 43rd Canadian federal election. In February 2019, former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould gave testimony to the House of Commons Justice Committee raising further speculation of political interference from the Liberal Party in journalism. As part of the testimony, Jessica Prince, the Wilson-Raybould's chief of staff revealed that Katie Telford, chief of staff to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, said: "If Jody is nervous, we would, of course, line up all kinds of people to write op-eds saying that what she is doing is proper."
Postmedia has faced questions from both Maclean's and Canadaland, regarding whether recent changes to their editorial staff was singling a shift that they were pushing "conservative views" onto their audience. In 2019, Kathy English, the public editor for the Toronto Star, admitted that The Star has failed to meet its journalistic standards by stating "call for reporting fairly and accurately and reflecting the pertinent facts and diversity of views on matters of public debate."
English defended The Star, arguing that there is "no such a thing as objectivity in journalism."
A report released from the Digital Democracy Project, a joint venture between the Public Policy Forum and McGill University's School of Public Policy revealed that non-partisans with high exposure to traditional media gave roughly 50% more wrong answers than those with low exposure. "Strong partisans", however, gave almost twice as many.

### The Electronic Age and Marshall McLuhan

In The Gutenberg Galaxy, Marshall McLuhan writes that:
   if a new technology extends one or more of our senses outside us into the social world, then new ratios among all of our senses will occur in that particular culture. It is comparable to what happens when a new note is added to a melody. And when the sense ratios alter in any culture then what had appeared lucid before may suddenly become opaque, and what had been vague or opaque will become translucent.
He gives great importance to the introduction of electronic media into the realm of people's everyday lives. According to McLuhan, the introduction of electronic media was one of the main media revolutions. He claims that technology evoked an emotional response from audiences although it technically had no moral bias. Technology in the electronic age shapes an individual's (as well as a society's) self-realization. In other words, McLuhan writes about three major revolutions in his various works and gives great importance to the electronic one. Electronic mass media clearly have a large impact on Canadian society and affect audiences in a variety of ways.

### Print Media and Marshall McLuhan

According to McLuhan's dichotomies of hot and cool media, print media occupy mostly a visual space, rather than other senses such as that of hearing (which is involved in media like television). He writes that this makes print media a hot medium, as it provides the reader with complete involvement without considerable stimulus. Because print media are hot media, they involve relatively little interaction from users. McLuhan discussed three main media revolutions, one of them coming about with the invention of the printing press. He explained that with texts being mass-produced there was a new level of immediacy, accessibility, and a subsequent rise in literacy; in manuscript culture, access to texts was limited to a privileged few, whereas in print culture, literature increasingly became a commodity. For this reason, print media was revolutionary at the time. However, with the more recent electronic revolution, the importance of print began to decline, as discussed below.

## Regulation

The Canadian government regulates media ownership and the state of media through the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. Section 3(d)(iii) of the Canadian Broadcasting Act states that media organizations should reflect "equal rights, the linguistic duality and multicultural and multiracial nature of Canadian society and the special place of aboriginal peoples within that society."

## Identity and Mass Media

According to John A. Irving, mass media functions differently in Canadian society because of a lack of collective identity; this is in reference to Canada's languages (and related cultures) as well as its proximity to the United States. Irving states that such cultural dualism means that only some of the population responds to the mass media in English, while the other portion remain uninfluenced by English-based media. In terms of the proximity to the United States, he explains that "most of the difficulties that threaten the mass media in Canada are the direct outcome of American economic and cultural imperialism." Because of the United States' overwhelming influence on Canadian mass media, Canada has not been able to form its own identity in the media. These two factors have slowed down the process of the creation of a Canadian community. Mass media help in forming a community through communication. When a large group of people is in communication with one another through media, an identifiable culture is formed. Individuals in dialectic experience a sense of membership and collective identity. A creative culture exists in Quebec for French Canadians, but English Canadians (that is, those who are not exposed to French culture) are hardly aware of it. The published works of French Canadian authors remain relatively unknown in nine of the ten provinces and have little influence outside of Quebec. In addition to this, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation operates two separate networks for radio and television; listeners and watchers of the English stations rarely listen to the French stations, and vice versa.
Irving claims that the most important problem facing Canada in terms of forming a genuine identity comes from its close proximity to the United States. It is difficult for a bilingual or multilingual country, such as Canada, Switzerland, or Belgium, to be so close to a country with one common language, such as the United States and England, because of the latter's influence on the former. Over ninety percent of the periodicals displayed on newsstands which sell more than 10,000 copies a month are American. Because of this overwhelming influence of the powerful United States, Canada has been significantly slowed down in forming its own unique identity.
Irving also mentions a third, less important reason for Canada's inability to form a genuine identity in history: distance and geographical regionalism. There are six distinct regions within the domain of Canada: the Atlantic, Quebec, Ontario, the Prairies, British Columbia, and the northern territories. Because of the large distances between these regions, media could not spread throughout the whole country as effectively in the past. In the time of canoe transportation, this distance was a barrier to communication; with the age of the telegraph-railway, Canada finally began to edge towards becoming a proper, connected nation.

## Business Model

Media often consists of a two-sided market model. In such cases, each side of the market is expected to provide a form of benefit to the other in return for the same. It is a mutual system of benefit in which there are two end-users or beneficiaries. A lot of times, mass media works in this way (in Canadian society as well as in any other). For example, television requires the viewer and advertisers to provide mutual network benefits. Printed books require the publisher and author to provide readers with quality work; in return, readers provide feedback and increase the popularity of the book through purchases. A newspaper's advertisers and readers mutually benefit from one another; readers provide business for advertisers while advertisers provide readers with information (since a significant portion of newspapers' funding comes from advertisers). The more successful a newspaper is, the better it gets at providing its readers with a well-rounded accumulation of news. All advertising-based media are two-sided markets. Bob Garfield explains that there are two issues with this model: widespread access to certain content has significantly lowered the amount that consumers are willing to spend on it; the audience becomes fragmented. The second issue is that the rise in available content has lowered the prices that advertisers are willing to pay in order to access a portion of the market.
Special attention must be paid to the importance of advertising, particularly in newspapers. Newspapers typically generate about 70 – 80 percent of their revenue from advertising, while the remainder comes from subscriptions and sales. However, with the recent move to online publishing, there have been problems. Online advertising is not nearly as effective as print advertising, according to Eric Clemons. Although he discusses advertising in relation to newspapers in the United States, similar problems exist in Canada. He claims that Internet advertising will fail for three reasons:
* Consumers do not trust advertising – Messages coming from commercial sources have proven to be considered less credible by audiences and therefore have a less powerful impact. Company sponsored blogs are among the least trusted sources of information on products and services.
* Consumers are not interested in viewing advertisements – They visit websites for the main content and do not want to see things which attempt to distract them from this.
* Consumers do not need advertising – If users need a product or service, they have their own sources on the Internet and prefer to use these as opposed to advertisements on websites which are not solely dedicated to the product or service.
Clemons suggests alternative methods for earning money through the Internet, namely selling content and selling access to virtual communities. However, one might argue that this would not be effective in current society; since content and access has been available for free for as long as the Internet has been around, sudden charges might cause an uproar among users of the Internet. Furthermore, a portion of Internet users may not be able to afford paying for content and access, which will limit the amount of revenue businesses will bring in.
In August 2015, the Canadian Media Guild, the union representing CBC journalists, became a registered third party in order to campaign for increased taxpayer funding of the CBC in the 2015 election. After the Liberal Party of Canada won the election, it increased taxpayer funding of the CBC by $150 million. In 2017, the federal government announced a five-year $50 million program to help struggling local newspapers. In 2018, it announced $595 million in tax credits to help struggling newspapers and television networks.

### Journalism model

The face of print journalism in Canada is undergoing change. Evening newspapers are no longer popular (one of the only surviving ones is tonight Newspaper), while morning newspapers (including the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, the National Post, and free newspapers such as Metro and 24) have survived and continued to bring in an audience. Before the 1970s, The Globe and Mail was one of the few surviving morning papers, while most popular newspapers were distributed in the evening in Toronto. Nowadays, most newspapers have joined The Globe and Mail and are published in the morning.
The newspaper industry in Canada (similar to the newspaper industry in other developed countries including the United States) is controlled by a small number of individual or corporate owners. This is referred to as concentrated ownership. Private or partially private ownership of competitive forms of news media helps to create a great amount of freedom of expression, according to Peter Desbarats. However, it may be argued that even these privately owned media outlets have their own agenda, and have therefore only contributed to a limited amount of freedom of expression. Robert A. Hackett discusses this, as well as the differences between publicly owned and privately owned media outlets. It may also be argued that publicly owned media contribute more to freedom of expression than privately owned media; Simeon Djankov, Caralee McLeish, Tatiana Nenova, and Andrei Schleifer, in a joint Harvard-World Bank study, discuss the advantages and disadvantages of publicly owned media outlets in relation to privately owned media outlets. They write that one of the first principles of media is that it is in the public interest, and it is therefore necessary to have outlets owned by the public. In this way, the public keeps a check on the agenda of publications. If there is too much of a bias, the owners (which in this case consists of the public) react and demand a change through various forms of feedback. In contrast, privately owned outlets only have a limited number of voices to give feedback, and these voices may have their own biased agendas. Two characteristics of electronic journalism in Canada set it apart from print journalism: firstly, broadcasting is a regulated industry (which is important to consider in relation to news sources such as radio and television). This means that in order to start a broadcast station, one must have a licence from the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission. This regulated industry also affects news content because it is constantly being monitored by the agency. Secondly, many radio stations and television stations in Canada are publicly owned. Print journalism has almost always been conducted by private enterprise in Canada, and radio also started as a private enterprise which was subject to regulation by the state. It became a hybrid of private and public broadcasters.
Nowadays, online journalism is on the rise. It provides a new platform for readers to interact instantly with news sources through blog comments and feedback. There are also various multimedia options which are not available with print journalism. For example, videos can be embedded into websites. Alexandre Gamela, a freelance journalist, says that "The print product is pretty much the same as it was 20, 30, 40 years ago, it is not well adapted to these new circumstances, therefore it needs to be re-thought and re-designed." For these reasons, online journalism continues to gain popularity. However, as will be discussed under the section on newspapers, readerships for print newspapers in Canada seems to be steady.
The Digital Democracy Project reports that Canadians both consume and somewhat trust print, broadcast and online media sources. They also consume news from social networks such as Twitter, but they mostly recognize the biased tendencies of people who actively post news on such networks. People with strong political opinions are at risk of becoming misinformed by depending only on news sources that they agree with (primarily social media, but also traditional media).

## Television

The history of television in Canada begins in Montreal and Toronto, where the first television stations were started in 1952. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation aired its first broadcast on September 6, 1952 from Montreal's station, CBFT. The program was bilingual. As mentioned by Irving, and supported by Arthur Siegel, modern media such as television and radio have become agents of denationalization because of the spillover of U.S. influence and fragmentation of media within Canada. Siegel implies that because of this, the state of television in Canada (i.e. whether it is healthy or dying) depends on the state of television in the United States.
Television was welcomed when it was first introduced into society. It brought about a change from communication which was previously limited to only audio. If one wanted to view something on a screen, one would have to visit the cinema; the television provided a way of sitting at home and having visual communication as well as entertainment. Nowadays, however, with the introduction of smartphones and the Internet, television is headed towards obsolescence according to Rabab Khan. He writes that because smartphones and computers allow one do what a television and radio combined allow, the need for the latter two media is declining. However, he writes that television allows for a shared experience which computers and smartphones do not allow. Henry Blodget also addresses this issue and claims that because revenue and profits of the television industry are still steadily coming in, people are in denial about its inevitable failure. He states that like the newspaper industry, television is beginning to migrate to the web and investing in digital platforms.
The Canadian television broadcasting industry is split between public and private ownership. Canada currently has 130 originating television stations, which broadcast on 1,456 transmitters across the country, on both the VHF and UHF bands.
In addition to the public Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/Société Radio-Canada, which operates both English (CBC Television) and French (Ici Radio-Canada Télé) television networks, there are five major private TV networks. CTV, Global, and Citytv broadcast in English, and are available throughout the country. TVA and Noovo (formerly 'V') broadcast in French and operate over-the-air in French-language markets (including Quebec and parts of Ontario and New Brunswick), although are also available across Canada via pay television. Most network stations are owned and operated by the networks themselves, although all networks have some affiliates with different ownership.
In addition, the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN), a service devoted mainly to programming of interest to the Indigenous peoples of Canada, is considered a network by the CRTC, although the network airs terrestrially only in the 3 Canadian territories, and must be carried by all television providers in the rest of Canada. There are, as well, a number of smaller television systems, such as CTV Two (a compliment to the main CTV network in smaller and secondary markets), and Omni Television—a group of Rogers-owned ethnic broadcasters.
Several provinces maintain provincial public broadcasting networks in addition to the CBC, including Télé-Québec, TVOntario, TFO, and Knowledge (British Columbia). Citytv Saskatchewan and CTV Two Alberta were formerly provincial public broadcasters (SCN and Access), but both have since been privatized and amalgamated into commercial networks operated by their current owners (Rogers and Bell). While both outlets devote a portion of their schedules to their networks' respective, advertising-supported entertainment programming, both networks are still required to adhere to an educational remit in the majority of their programming. Unlike in the United States, where a statewide public network is usually the state's primary PBS member station, the provincially owned public systems in Canada are independent of each other and have their own programming.
Only CBC/Radio-Canada, TVA and APTN are officially considered national networks by the CRTC, while V is a provincial network in Quebec. City, CTV and Global are legally considered "television services" even though they operate as networks for all practical purposes. As well, there are a few independent stations, including CFTU in Montreal, CJON in St. John's and CJIL in Lethbridge. However, most of these are not general entertainment stations like independent stations in the United States, but are instead specialty community channels or educational services. CJON is the only independent commercial station currently operating in Canada, although CJON sublicenses a mix of programming from Global, CTV and other sources rather than purchasing program rights independently.
TV station callsigns in Canada are usually made up of four letters, although two stations have three call letters (CKX in Brandon and CKY in Winnipeg) and some (primarily CBC-owned Radio-Canada stations) have five. The first call letter is always C, and callsigns of privately owned television stations start with the two-letter combinations of CF, CH, CI, CJ, or CK. The combinations CG, CY, CZ and several combinations beginning with V and X are also assigned to Canada, but to date no Canadian television station has ever been licensed to take a call sign within those ranges. There is no clear rule for the call letters of rebroadcasters—some are labelled by the call-letters of the originating station, followed by a number, while others have their own distinct call letters. Low-power repeater transmitters (LPRTs) have their own unique callsign format, which consists of the letters CH followed by four numbers. Some rebroadcast transmitters are licensed as semi-satellites, which are licensed to air separate commercials (and, on rarer occasions, a limited amount of distinct programming) targeted to their community of license.
CBC-owned stations use call letters beginning with the combination CB (through a special agreement with the government of Chile); private affiliates of the CBC use the same combinations as other private stations. The CBC has also sometimes directly acquired former private affiliate stations; these usually (although not always) retain their historic call sign rather than changing to a CB call. While Canadian TV stations are technically required to identify themselves over the air by their call letters, the rule is rarely enforced by the CRTC. As a result, most TV stations never use their call letters for any purpose other than official CRTC business, and instead brand under regional names such as CTV Northern Ontario or Global Regina. Even then, most network-owned stations may only use these brands for station identification and newscasts, and promote the majority of their programming under the network brand without any disambiguation.
Due to their proximity to American media markets, a number of Canadian cities and regions receive US broadcasters as part of their local media. This has required special dispensation for Canadian content for broadcasters in the Windsor, Ontario region (due to it falling within the Detroit media footprint), and there have also been cases of US-based broadcasters (KCND-TV of Pembina, North Dakota, now CKND-DT of Winnipeg; also KVOS-TV of Bellingham, Washington) targeting its programming and advertising at Canadian viewers.
Although all broadcast networks in Canada are required to produce and air some Canadian content, only the English and French networks of the CBC run predominantly Canadian-produced schedules, though, the English network does run some imported programming from the United Kingdom, most notably Coronation Street. The private networks, CTV, Global and Citytv, have all at times faced criticism over their level of commitment to producing and airing Canadian programming. The commercial networks often find it easier to purchase rights to hit American series than to invest in Canadian productions, which are often prohibitively costly for the comparatively small size of the Canadian market. The French-language networks traditionally have had less difficulty meeting their Canadian content obligations, as the language difference makes francophone audiences much more readily receptive to home-grown programming than to dubbed American imports.
Digital television is an emerging technology in Canada. Although some TV stations have begun broadcasting digital signals in addition to their regular VHF or UHF broadcasts, this is not yet as widespread as in the United States. Although most markets have digital channel assignments already in place, to date digital broadcasts have only launched in the largest metropolitan areas. Digital television sets are available in Canadian stores, but are not universally present in all Canadian homes.
Several broadcasters, including the CBC, have argued that there is no viable business case for a comprehensive digital conversion strategy in Canada. At CRTC hearings in 2007 on the future direction of regulatory policy for television, broadcasters proposed a number of strategies, including funding digital conversion by eliminating restrictions on the amount of advertising that television broadcasters are permitted to air, allowing terrestrial broadcasters to charge cable viewers a subscription fee similar to that already charged by cable specialty channels, permitting license fees similar to those which fund the BBC in the United Kingdom, or eliminating terrestrial television broadcasting entirely and moving to an exclusively cable-based distribution model.
In May 2007, the CRTC set August 31, 2011 as the deadline for digital conversion in Canada. This is approximately two years later than the cutoff date in the United States. The CRTC ultimately decided to relax restrictions on advertising as the funding mechanism. However, a CRTC statement issued in June 2008 indicated that as of that date, only 22 digital transmitters had been fully installed across the entire country, and expressed the regulator's concern that Canada's television broadcasters were not adequately preparing for the shift to digital broadcasting.

### Cable television

Cable television is a very common method of television programming delivery in Canada. By 1997, already 77% of Canadian homes subscribed to a cable television service. Vancouver, with 93% of its homes connected to cable, had one of the highest cable connection rates in the world.
There are currently 739 licensed cable distributors in Canada. This significant decline from over 2,000 just a few years ago is attributable both to major cable companies acquiring smaller distributors and to a recent change in CRTC rules by which independent cable operators with fewer than 2,000 subscribers are no longer required to operate under full CRTC licences. (However, the CRTC does retain some regulatory authority over these operators. This is an exemption granted by the CRTC to previously licensed companies that continue to meet certain conditions, and does not mean that anybody can simply set up their own small cable company without CRTC approval.)
Major Canadian cable companies include Rogers, Shaw, Cogeco, Vidéotron and EastLink/Persona. Most Canadian cities are served by only one cable company per market; in the few cities that are served by more than one cable company, each company is restricted to a specific geographical division within the market. For instance, in Hamilton, Cogeco Cable, Rogers Cable and Source Cable are all licensed operators, but each has a monopoly in a specific area of the city.
However, two major companies offer direct broadcast satellite delivery as an alternative to cable: Bell Satellite TV, which is a division of BCE Inc., and Shaw Direct, which is a division of Shaw. Grey market DBS dishes can also be obtained from American services such as DirecTV and Dish Network, but as these are not licensed Canadian providers, stores that sell those packages—and users who buy them—are at risk of criminal charges.
In some remote communities in the Territories (Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut), cable delivery is prohibitively costly. As such, similar services are offered through MMDS technology.
An English-language 'basic cable' package in Canada traditionally includes:
* CTV, CTV Two, Global, City – the major English-language Canadian commercial networks;
* CBC Television and Ici Radio-Canada Télé – the English- and French-language CBC networks;
* a provincial educational broadcast undertaking (e.g. TVO in Ontario), if available (not all provinces have one);
* a community channel, produced by the particular cable company, which usually includes public affairs and information programming as well as community events listings (c.f. public-access television in the United States);
* APTN – a network devoted to Aboriginal programming;
* TVA – one of the two private French-language broadcasters in Quebec;
* nearby independent channels or channels from smaller television systems such as Omni Television or Yes TV;
* CPAC – a channel that broadcasts parliamentary sessions and committee meetings, along with some political public-affairs programming;
* a similar channel to CPAC, but broadcasting the proceedings of the provincial legislature;
* network affiliates (typically from the nearest major American city) of ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, and PBS;
* a mixture of Canadian and American special-interest channels (e.g. TSN, MuchMusic, CNN, CTV News Channel, Showcase).
A further set of Canadian and American special-interest channels are offered as 'extended cable' packages, which are available for additional fees. In the past, cable companies have engaged in the controversial practice of negative option billing, in which a subscriber is automatically given and billed for the new services unless he or she specifically declines them, but this is now illegal.
A package of 'pay TV' channels is also available for additional fees, including movie networks such as Crave TV, Movie Central, Super Channel, and Super Écran; and American superstations such as WSBK, WPIX, WGN, and KTLA (which are often affiliated with The CW and MyNetworkTV.) These services, however, require a descrambler box.
A study in 2006 said that the CRTC had licensed 44 digital specialty services and 5 ethnic specialty- and pay-television services across the country.
Cable companies now offer digital cable packages in most Canadian cities, including a number of channels which have been licensed exclusively for digital package distribution. Digital cable also typically includes a range of audio broadcast services such as Galaxie and Max Trax. In some markets, digital cable service may also include local radio stations; where this is offered, it has largely replaced the availability of cable FM service. Digital cable, however, is provided only if a customer chooses to subscribe to that package. As of 2016, cable companies are also now required to offer a "skinny basic" option, whereby a small selection of channels – typically the main over-the-air networks, along with "public service" channels such as The Weather Network and CPAC – are packaged for a maximum fee of $25 with additional channels available on a pick and pay basis at the subscriber's discretion. Although this package has had some popularity, the traditional larger and more expensive cable packages remain the dominant subscription mode.
Although this is sometimes controversial, Canadian cable companies are required by the CRTC to practise simultaneous substitution when a Canadian channel and a non-Canadian channel (which is usually American) are airing the same program at the same time. Programming on an American service may also be blocked if it has significant bearing on a Canadian legal matter (e.g., one episode of Law & Order, inspired by the trials of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, was blocked in Canada) or if it interferes with a Canadian channel's broadcast rights (such as James Bond movies airing on Spike TV; the Canadian broadcast rights are held by Bell Media.)
Many cable companies also offer high speed cable Internet service.