When we talk about infrastructure, we usually mean roads, rail, housing, or power grids. The hard stuff. The tangible stuff. But for me, as a producer and a Canadian, the most powerful infrastructure we have is also the most overlooked: our stories.
Culture is not a by-product of a nation’s development. It is the development. And content: films, series, documentaries, and everything in between, is how that culture travels. It’s how it endures. It’s how it defines us to the world and, just as importantly, to ourselves.
The Quiet Power of Storytelling
Growing up in Canada, I didn’t always see us reflected on screen. When I did, it was often with a kind of detachment, as if our stories had to pass through a foreign lens before being taken seriously. We were funny, polite, quirky, rarely bold, rarely complex, rarely the lead.
But something changed in me once I started producing. I saw firsthand that every script, every project, every frame was a choice. Not just an artistic one, but a political one. A social one. Because what we choose to fund, amplify, and export says something about who we are as a country.
We often think of film and media as entertainment. But media is policy. Media is diplomacy. Media is infrastructure. And the decisions we make now about what to build, and who gets to build it, will shape how Canada exists in the global imagination for generations to come.
Producers Are Architects
As a producer, I often feel like a city planner. I’m not just connecting directors to money or pushing paperwork. I’m laying roads between communities, between languages, between identities. I’m asking: What kinds of stories will serve us not just today, but ten years from now? What does Canada want to say, and who do we want to say it to?
That’s why I believe producers have to stop thinking of themselves as middlemen and start acting like builders. Builders of ecosystems, pipelines, and long-term strategy. Not just for funding and production, but for legacy.
If you look at countries like South Korea, Denmark, or Ireland, their global influence didn’t come from economic muscle alone. It came from creative vision, backed by national will. K-dramas didn’t just “go viral.” They were the result of decades of strategic investment in cultural exports. Ireland’s boom in screenwriting didn’t just happen. It was built with public support, talent development, and intentional partnerships.
We could do that too. We should do that too.
Canada on the World Stage
Canada has the talent. We have the diversity. We have the landscapes, emotional and physical to support world-class storytelling. What we need now is the boldness to treat content like infrastructure. To say: this matters. This builds value. This builds identity.
I want Canadian media to feel inevitable. Not polite. Not derivative. I want our films to tour, to sell, to shape the conversation at major festivals and in living rooms around the world. I want our shows to tell the truth about who we are: complicated, beautiful, fractured, bilingual, Indigenous, immigrant, underdog, elite.
To do that, we need to think of producers as more than facilitators. We need to empower them as strategists, connectors, and cultural diplomats. We need to see content not just as what fills a platform—but as what fills a nation’s soul.
The Next Generation Deserves a Foundation
Everything I build now is with an eye to the future. I want the next generation of filmmakers, especially from marginalized and underserved communities to inherit an industry that is more structured, more strategic, and more sustainable than the one I came up in.
That’s why I mentor. That’s why I fight for better funding models. That’s why I obsess over IP ownership and why I push for equity in front of and behind the camera. Because infrastructure doesn’t happen by accident. It happens through alignment of policy, industry, and vision.
And if we want to tell the big, global stories, we need the foundation to support them.
What If We Took This Seriously?
Imagine if we treated our media exports with the same seriousness as energy, manufacturing, or tech. Imagine if our embassies prioritized film festivals the way they do trade shows. Imagine if we built pan-Canadian distribution systems the way we built the railroads, because we believed it was important that stories could move across provinces, cultures, and time zones.
That’s not a fantasy. That’s a choice. And we’re not that far off.
I see momentum. I see hunger. I see creators and executives and funders all asking the same thing: How can we go further? How can we build better?
My answer is this: think of your next project not as a one-off, but as a building block. Think of your slate not as a portfolio, but as a blueprint. And think of your role, not just as a creator but as a nation builder.
Because content is infrastructure. And when we treat it like that, Canada becomes more than a country, it becomes a culture the world wants to know.