Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the members of the committee.
I'm Valerie Creighton. As the chair mentioned, Nathalie Clermont, our vice-president of programs and business development, is also on the line.
Your work on Bill C-10 is absolutely critical. It will shape the rules of the road for broadcasting in Canada, as well as how TV, film and digital media content is made, who sees it and whose stories are told.
Canada's television and digital media production industry has grown every year for the past 10 years. It creates thousands of jobs from coast to coast to coast, in cities and in towns—181,000 jobs in 2019 alone. Heartland, filmed in southern Alberta, generated 4,500 jobs and $460 million in economic activity over 10 seasons.
The content industry attracts investment in Canada by streamers, foreign production companies and foreign broadcasters. Jusqu'au déclin, or The Decline, a Quebec-led French-language feature commissioned by Netflix, has been seen by 21 million people.
Our industry showcases Canadian stories and talent to the world and we are on top of our game in that regard. Radio-Canada's C'est comme ça que je t'aime was the first and only television project invited to screen at the 2019 Berlin film festival. Diggstown, a Black-led Halifax production, was recently purchased by Fox for U.S. distribution. CTV's Transplant recently sold to NBC and was hailed by The New York Times as the best drama on television. As well, of course, Schitt's Creek won nine Emmys and recently received five Golden Globe nominations. This is unprecedented success, and these shows were made in Canada by producers, broadcasters and the CMF.
CMF is the largest screen content fund in the country. We provide approximately $350 million to independent producers and digital media companies annually. Our revenue comes from two main sources: 43% from the federal government, and 52% in contributions from the broadcast distribution undertakings, the BDUs, in a regulated percentage of revenues only from cable, satellite and direct-to-home subscriptions. When the CMF was created 10 years ago, the model was one-third government funding and two-thirds BDU. Today, the BDU contributions are declining as Canadians cut their cable cords or don't subscribe at all. As a result, the CMF's revenue from the BDUs declines every year.
In discussions around Bill C-10, it has been said that streamers like Netflix should contribute to the CMF like Canadian broadcasters do. However, to be clear, broadcasters do not contribute to the CMF. It's the BDUs such as Shaw, Rogers, Bell and Videotron that contribute, and their broadcaster assets are the ones that benefit. For example, this year Videotron contributed $22.3 million to the CMF. Its broadcast asset, TVA, triggered $25.2 million in CMF funding towards the financing structures of their projects.
Every dollar the CMF invests in production leverages four dollars, so this is not the time to lose that economic impact or stifle the creative growth of this industry.
How does all of this affect Bill C-10? In our view, it's in every way possible. We need modernized legislation, regulation and a modernized CMF to deliver programs in today's environment. Our system has become archaic. The orderly marketplace is a thing of the past, but the creative and economic potential for Canadian content has never been greater. Bill C-10 is a critical step to unlock change.
The CMF supports Bill C-10, but the bill and the CRTC direction requires clear language that prioritizes growth in direct investment in Canadian content production in English and French, Canadian ownership of intellectual property, a platform-agnostic approach to domestic and international content distribution, and indigenous content and content from under-represented groups, as proposed by the Indigenous Screen Office and the Racial Equity Media Collective.
We need to bring to this work a mindset of expansion, not contraction, for our stories, our creators and our industry to leverage the investment to date. With the right legislative language, we can achieve the phenomenal levels of success available to us in this new future.
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.