Canada’s effort to build a more internationally connected screen industry gained new momentum at the Toronto International Film Festival, where Ottawa signed modernized audiovisual coproduction treaties with the United Kingdom and Spain. The agreements are designed to make it easier for Canadian producers to combine financing, talent and creative resources with partners in two important European markets.
The move arrives as the federal government increasingly talks about economic and cultural resilience through diversification abroad. That does not mean Canada is abandoning the enormous American entertainment market. Rather, Ottawa is trying to give Canadian producers more routes to financing, distribution and audiences outside it. The U.K. is already one of Canada’s most important screen partners, while Spain offers a smaller relationship with substantial room to grow.
Two Modernized Deals Signed at TIFF
Canadian Identity and Culture Minister Marc Miller signed the two treaties on September 14 during TIFF: The Market in Toronto. Ian Murray, the U.K.’s Minister of State for Creative Industries, signed for Britain, while Marta Serrano, director general of Spain’s Instituto de la Cinematografía y de las Artes Audiovisuales, represented the Spanish government. Both agreements replace arrangements created decades before streaming platforms transformed the economics and distribution of film and television.
The Canadian government says the new framework is intended to make cross-border production easier and improve the competitiveness of Canadian companies in an increasingly digital screen economy. The agreements are significant, but they are not yet operational. Both must complete their respective ratification processes before taking effect. Ottawa’s decision to stage the signings at TIFF’s new industry market was also deliberate: the government wants Toronto to become a place where Canadian producers not only premiere projects, but find financing partners, negotiate rights and build international productions.
The UK Relationship Is Already One of Canada’s Biggest
The British agreement modernizes a relationship dating to 1975, with the previous treaty last amended in 1991. Much has changed since then. Television has become increasingly international, streaming services have blurred traditional territorial boundaries, and independent productions frequently assemble financing from several countries before cameras begin rolling. British Film Institute officials said the updated arrangement recognizes that reality by providing producers with greater flexibility and by covering both film and television.
There is already substantial business to build upon. During the past decade, Canada and the U.K. participated together in 98 treaty coproductions—72 television productions and 26 films—with combined budgets of about C$629 million. The U.K. has been Canada’s leading treaty partner for television coproduction and its second-largest partner for film. Britain is also Canada’s largest creative-export market in Europe. Canadian cultural exports to the U.K. reached C$931 million in 2023, with nearly 30 per cent coming from film and video.
Spain Starts From a Smaller Base but Offers Growth
Canada’s screen relationship with Spain is much less developed, which is precisely what makes the updated treaty potentially important. The previous bilateral arrangement dated to January 1985. Since then, producers from the two countries have collaborated on just 16 treaty coproductions—11 films and five television series—with combined budgets approaching C$123 million. Compared with the U.K. numbers, the gap illustrates how much room remains for Canadian-Spanish partnerships to expand.
Commercial ties are already moving in that direction. Canada says its overall cultural exports to Spain have increased by 35 per cent since 2017, and film and video now account for roughly one-quarter of Canadian cultural exports to the Spanish market. Spain itself has placed considerable emphasis on international production. In the first 2026 round of Spanish government support for feature-film production, 20 of the 31 successful projects were international coproductions. Those projects received almost €19.74 million, highlighting how routinely international financing is becoming part of Spain’s production model.
What a Coproduction Treaty Actually Changes
A treaty coproduction is more than a Canadian company hiring a foreign production house or shooting scenes overseas. Producers in participating countries pool creative, technical and financial resources under rules established by their governments. Once a qualifying project receives official coproduction status, it can generally be recognized as a national production in both participating countries rather than being treated simply as foreign content.
That distinction can materially change a project’s financing prospects. National status can help qualifying productions gain access to domestic incentives, funding programs and other benefits available to homegrown productions. The new U.K. framework specifically promises greater access to domestic funding and tax incentives, clearer arrangements around copyright and revenue, more flexible production rules, and stronger provisions concerning distribution and broadcast. For an independent Canadian producer assembling a multimillion-dollar budget, being able to combine Canadian and European financing systems can turn a difficult financing plan into one that is commercially achievable.
Canada Has Billions Riding on a Competitive Screen Sector
The policy matters because film and television production is already a sizable Canadian industry. The Canadian Media Producers Association’s Profile 2025 report estimated total production volume at C$10.17 billion in the 2024-25 fiscal year, up 4.6 per cent from the previous year. The industry supported an estimated 181,360 jobs and generated an economic impact measured in the billions of dollars across production, labour income and related activity.
International production is a major part of that footprint. Foreign location and service production—including projects primarily made by foreign producers in Canada and visual-effects work performed for international productions—rose 9.5 per cent to about C$5.3 billion in 2024-25. It accounted for an estimated 97,920 Canadian jobs, or 54 per cent of production-sector employment counted in the report. That makes international relationships economically important to crews, studios, visual-effects businesses and suppliers from Vancouver to Toronto and Montreal, even as policymakers also try to strengthen Canadian-owned intellectual property and domestically controlled production.
The “Beyond the U.S.” Push Is About Diversification, Not Separation
The new treaties fit a broader policy theme running through Ottawa in 2026: build more international relationships so Canadian industries are not overly dependent on any single partner. Miller used almost identical language days before the TIFF signings at the Lumière Summit in France, saying Canada wanted a stronger audiovisual sector at home while “diversifying our partnerships abroad.” The federal government has been using similar language across trade, defence, technology, energy and investment policy.
The United States remains enormously important to Canada’s economy and entertainment-production ecosystem, and nothing in the U.K. or Spain announcements suggests Ottawa intends to sever those connections. The backdrop, however, has changed. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has openly said the old Canada-U.S. economic relationship cannot simply be assumed to continue unchanged and has made diversification a central strategy amid trade tensions with Washington. For film producers, diversification means something practical: more countries in which Canadian projects can find partners, financing, buyers and audiences if conditions in one market become less favourable.
Ottawa Is Building on a Coproduction Network Already Worth Billions
Canada is not beginning its international screen strategy from scratch. The country has audiovisual coproduction arrangements with 59 partners, giving Canadian producers one of the broader treaty networks in the industry. Between 2015 and 2025, Canada participated in 508 treaty coproductions whose combined budgets were approximately C$3.5 billion. France and the U.K. have been particularly important, demonstrating that European partnerships have already played a major role in the Canadian production ecosystem.
The U.K. and Spain agreements are also part of a more recent modernization drive. Canada signed 10 modernized treaties between 2016 and 2024 and added another important agreement with South Korea in April 2026, replacing a television-focused memorandum dating from 1995. Taken together, the Korean, British and Spanish deals suggest Ottawa is refreshing older agreements for a production environment where projects frequently cross borders, involve multiple financiers and need distribution strategies covering theatrical release, broadcasters and digital platforms at the same time.
TIFF’s New Market Is Becoming Part of the Strategy
The location of the treaty signings carries its own significance. Ottawa committed C$23 million over three years to the Toronto International Film Festival through Budget 2024, with part of that investment supporting the development of TIFF’s new content market. The federal government described the initiative as a North American hub where screen projects could be bought and sold across multiple platforms, giving Canadian companies a larger commercial meeting place on home soil.
That changes TIFF’s potential role for Canadian producers. Film festivals are usually associated publicly with premieres, stars and awards campaigns, but professional markets are where much of the less visible business happens—financing relationships are formed, distribution rights are negotiated and projects can acquire international partners years before audiences see them. Signing treaties with two European governments at the market reinforces Ottawa’s attempt to connect cultural policy with commercial infrastructure. Instead of simply sending Canadian producers overseas to find partners, the strategy also aims to bring international decision-makers into Canada to make those connections.
Ratification Will Determine When Producers Can Use the New Rules
The signatures are therefore a milestone rather than the finish line. Canada does not publish the complete text of an audiovisual coproduction treaty as an agreement in force until the required procedures have been completed. Ottawa says treaties are tabled in the House of Commons for 21 sitting days before Canadian ratification, while the partner country must complete its own domestic process. The U.K. and Spain agreements will become practically important once those steps are finished and producers can work under their modernized provisions.
What happens afterward will be more revealing than the ceremony itself. The U.K. relationship already has scale, so success could mean more frequent or larger Canadian-British projects and easier assembly of international financing. With Spain, growth in the number and value of joint productions would be the clearer measure. Either way, Ottawa’s objective is increasingly visible: maintain the advantages of Canada’s deep North American screen-industry connections while giving Canadian creators more ways to finance, own, sell and distribute projects across a wider international market.
