The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Should Canada Join Eurovision?

Episode Date: May 14, 2026

Is Canada ready to step onto the Eurovision stage, and what would that say about how the country sees its cultural role internationally? After the federal government said in the 2025 budget that it was "working with CBC/Radio-Canada to explore Canada's participation in Eurovision," questions remain about how such a move would work, what it would cost, and whether it is a gamble worth taking. From Ottawa, Nomi Claire Lazar, professor of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa, examines the political and public value of the proposal, while Toronto-based Brock University adjunct professor Karen Fricker brings a critical perspective shaped by her long engagement with Eurovision as a cultural institution. We then look inward, to the cultural legacy Canada has already built. Toronto-made children's television, from Mr. Dressup and Degrassi to Polka Dot Door and Today's Special, shaped generations of viewers in Ontario and beyond. Rundown producer Colin Ellis speaks with cultural historian Ed Conroy about his new book, ImagiNation: The Golden Age of Toronto Kids' TV, and why revisiting these shows is not just an exercise in nostalgia but a way of understanding how public broadcasting, cultural ambition, and national identity have been constructed and contested over time.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hope to see you then. This week, Eurovision Song Contest is turning 70. A lot's changed since the first competition in 1956. Back then, seven countries competed for glory. Now, 35 are going head to head. And of course, the performances look and sound a little different. As Canada tries to build closer ties with Europe, Could we be on that stage someday?

We look at the pros and cons of competing in Eurovision and what the Olympics of pop music has to do with geopolitics. Then, what do a scary floating head? A talking pineapple. And this big, colorful guy have in common. We talked to the author of a new book about the golden age of kids TV in Toronto. Welcome to The Reddown. In the 2025 by the time,

the federal government said it was, quote, working with CBC Radio Canada to explore Canada's participation in Eurovision. So, how would that work? And is it a shot worth taking? From the nation's capital, Nomi Claire Luzar, a professor of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa, and from Toronto, Karen Fricker, an adjunct professor of dramatic arts at Brock University. Great to have you both on the line. Nomi, let's start with you. Prime Minister Mark Carney has described Canada as the most European of non-European countries. So is joining Eurovision actually a strategic move for Canada or is just a fun idea? I think it's a very strategic move for Canada for at least three reasons. So first of all, as we're all aware, there is

quite a lot of tension with respect to Canada's relationship with North America, which has historically been our sort of tightest trade partners, our tightest defense partners. And as Canada is having to look elsewhere in the world for those kinds of partnerships, we do find those partners in many places across the world. But Europe is a very strong partner, potential partner for trade, a strong potential partner for defense. But also, and this is where Eurovision comes in, a strong partner for our shared values. So the European Union like Canada is a federation of very multicultural and diverse states, political bodies. And so just and just like Canada, Europe centers the rule of law. It centers constitutional democracy. And Canada is trying to

put itself forward on the world stage as a state that still values those things. So the pivot toward Europe that joining Eurovision symbolically communicates, does serve that role of signaling that we're like Europe, a federation of a very multicultural groups, and like Europe, that we center the rule of law and constitutional democracy, and sending that, or conducting that sort of symbolic politics will help to solidify Canada's relationship with Europe in terms of trade and defense. Karen, I'm going to admit, I'm late to the game. I remember going to my first Eurovision party in 2018.

This is when Israeli singer Netta had won. I was at a party. People had to bring food from different countries that were being represented. I had no idea what I was watching. And I want to have a better understanding of do Canadians watch Eurovision? I think in my experience, Canadians watch if they have a connection to a European country. Like my students at Brock, when I first arrived at Brock, one of my students said, I understand you study Eurovision. My people are Macedonian. We watch on Macedonian TV off the

disc on our ceiling. But I think it's become now that it's available, you can watch it on YouTube, it's become a little bit cooler within pop culture for young people to watch Eurovision. But I think if Canada is thinking of joining, getting it shown on the national broadcaster so that there can be a much wider recognition of the contest beyond the kind of deosporic and youth culture markets would be a very important move. You mentioned public broadcasters,

Karen, help us understand what are the rules for joining Eurovision? Because it isn't necessarily about talent, you know, whether you share the same values, actually has to do with the public broadcasters. Yeah, it is, well, it seems like a contest of nations because

the contestants sing for their country, like you vote for France or you vote for the UK. But it's actually a contest of public broadcasters. It is organized by the European Broadcasting Union. And so you need to be a full member of the EBU as a broadcaster in order to field an entry, but not necessarily because Australia has been competing for the past 10 years. And they are an associate member who are getting a special permission. And this could be the way that Canada could enter is if we got the special permission. But there's things. that tension there between, yes, it's a contest of nations, but in fact, it is really about

broadcast politics and dictated by the relationships between broadcasters. Nomi, with that being said, what's in it for Canada? So Canada is a pretty complicated family. I think we could all agree. There are certain things where we get along very well, certain other issues where different parts of the country do tend to disagree. And we know from research that building a sense of common purpose tends to go better when we have a shared sense, you know, shared language, shared sense of history. And these are the sorts of things where, you know, Canada does struggle. So we do have to look for other ways of kind of building that sense of communal purpose. And it helps when, and what we know, you know,

from the research in terms of what works there is that when people do things together, it helps them feel like a unit together. So just like your family has certain traditions or does certain things on Thanksgiving, et cetera, doing those things together does help build that sense of common purpose. So when we solve problems together, when we engage in politics together, when we have the same experiences with our, say, national health care or even, you know, watching public media, those are all nation-building types of things. Now, the beauty of doing Eurovision together is that while of course Eurovision

is political in its own special ways, it's not explicitly political. So it gives us something to do together as a nation that sort of sets aside the things that pull us apart. And what's more than that, it's just so much fun. And we know that people come together most when they're having fun, when they're having common experiences either that are fun or that make them afraid, as we saw, you know, when Canada pulled together with the threats, the trade threats from the United States. So having Eurovision be this event that Canadians experience together, which is just so much fun and sort of puts the politics aside, makes good sense. And there's one more reason, just quite quickly, why Eurovision is so great for this.

And that's that just like with Thanksgiving, where maybe you wouldn't see your family or certain members of your family if it wasn't on the calendar that now is the time that you see them, Eurovision happens every year. So it sort of schedules right into your year that at this time we're all going to sit down

and have this really fun party together. And it sort of automates the rehearsal of our kind of collective endeavor. So I think that's the biggest thing. that's in it for Canada, in addition to that sort of signaling I talked about before, of being part of this sort of community of nations in Europe. All right. Nomi, you had mentioned the politics behind it.

So let's talk a little bit about it. All of this conversation is happening on the backdrop of an affordability crisis, a trade war, as we mentioned to our neighbors to the south. There's a lot going on that Canadians are dealing with. So what does the federal government and CBC have to do to sort of sell the idea of of Eurovision to fellow Canadians? Well, it's interesting that you asked that because I've been talking to my students about that. So how many of you have seen Eurovision?

Would you watch it if it was available? And I do think that there would be some work just to help Canadians know what this is, why it's fun, and also to sort of catch up with it as a tradition. So those of my students who come from Eurovision countries, existing Eurovision countries, all of them have stories to tell about how, you know, what their school class would do or what their friends would do, et cetera. And those things build over the course of years. So we'd really be playing catch-up there. So, you know, I would defer to Karen on how, you know, what kind of communication strategy might be necessary to get the message out there

that this is just so much fun. And maybe what I would, you know, look to, what other countries have done as well, like Australia, to kind of get that interest going, because I do think it would take some effort. Karen? Yeah. Thank you. I agree it's a long game. And if Canada really wants to do this, I would say they need to start by attending.

And I understand through reporting in Canadian affairs that came out this week that there are three representatives of the CBC in Vienna right now observing the contest. Good start. We should start broadcasting it. We should start adding our own. Canadian commentary because all of the national broadcasters get to have commentary in their national language with national references. So we would need Canadian voices explaining the contest to CBC viewers. And the CBC would need to figure out how you do this. What are our options for deciding

who's going to represent us? Should we have a national song contest, as has been mooted, to choose an entry? Do we want Newfoundland music? Do we want Quebec music? Do we want indigenous music. But there's an awareness question, which is exactly what you're talking about, Nomi, about just making sure that people know what it is, because that investment needs to come first with awareness. I would just add that one thing that's working in our favor, in favor of Eurovision being something that Canadians caught into is that the format is quite familiar. So we know that all these

shows like the boys or Canada's next. I can't remember what they're all coming. The kind of format of this contest between performers is something that Canadians are familiar with is something that Canadians really enjoy. I know my parents get really into it and they're otherwise not people I would have

assumed would sort of caught into Eurovision or whatever. So there's something about the format that we know works. So that might be a place that the CBC might start in terms of explaining to Canadians, like, oh, this is sort of like that, except that it's the whole country. So I do think there's there is an audience. I do think there is a familiarity with an interest in this format of television. Karen, this year's Eurovision is steeped in quite a bit of controversy. Five countries are boycotting the competition due to Israel's participation. citing the ongoing Israel Hamas war, which thousands of Palestinian civilians have been killed.

So I am questioning the timing here, and a lot of people are, is Canada's interest in joining coming at the wrong time? That is a definitive yes from me. It is a very difficult time for the contest. The organizers, the European Broadcasting Union have acknowledged that this is the hardest time in the contest history. This kind of a boycott where multiple broadcasters have said, we're not competing. it's never happened before. And it is it is pretty toxic over there right now. And it's the fan base,

the spectatorship are so passionate about the contest. And there are a lot of hearts that are breaking about how it is that this contest that represents for so many people, Europeanness, unity, fun. I completely agree with Nomi's point. Having a great time in the spirit of benign competition, the paradoxes behind the contest that on the one hand, it's always been said by the organizers that it's not political, but it's obviously profoundly political because it is nations competing against nations. All of that has caught up with a contest and it's making for a lot of difficulty. One might wonder if the fact that there is discussion of Canada joining might be strategic on the part of the European Broadcasting Union to have a good news story. Look, we have a

shiny new entry. I get it, but I think that there needs to be some thought about what we might be getting ourselves into here. All right. Well, we will have to look and see and see what happens. We're going to leave it there. No me. Karen, thank you so much for this. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Mr. Dressup, so many degrassy teens. And of course, TVO today's own Pocod Door, today's special, and more. Kids' programs made in Toronto raised generations in Ontario and beyond. Runddown producer Colin Ellis sat down with cultural historian Ed Conroy to talk about his new book, Imagination, the Golden Age of Toronto Kids TV, and why appreciating these shows is about nostalgia,

but also so much more. Ed Conroy, welcome to The Rundown. Thank you, Colin. Why was it important to write a book about Toronto Kids TV? Toronto Kids TV? I mean, it's the Hollywood. Toronto is the Hollywood for children's television, really for four or five decades. And it was really amazing to me that there was this lack of information. There was the odd thing, you know, about certain shows.

Like there's a great film about Mr. Dressup. But I thought it was really important to put it all in context across all the different networks and try to understand maybe why things were the way they were. You mentioned the word Hollywood, but it's not given the same respect as Hollywood. is it? Not at all. I mean, it's actually television as a medium is always has been very disrespected, perhaps because it was ephemeral and there was so much of it. Nobody really thought much about it being an art. And children's television was even more disrespected because it was seen as just something that you put on to sort of quiet the kids. And I think as time

has gone on, we've realized as a society that what children see in the old days on television, obviously now with tablets and phones, is incredibly important. So sort of understanding the stuff that was good versus the stuff that was bad is something we should all strive to understand. I mentioned TV is being misunderstood, but there had to have been people who saw the potential for television as a medium for educating children. And I think you mentioned, one of them being by the name of Dr. Fred Rainsbury. Can you just tell us a little bit about him? Yeah, I mean, Fred Rainsbury was an absolute visionary for television.

He was a school teacher. And, you know, the hysteria about television when it first came out, sort of after the Second World War, you know, you look at the way people are reacting to AI now and the fear of AI. is nothing compared to how terrified a lot of people were about television. I mean, they called it the idiot box, and they thought it would turn children's brains into mush if they watch too much of it. And so Rainsbury was one of the early kind of champions of educational television, and he really believed that if you brought together educators with entertainers, you could meet them in the middle. you could create a product that was actually, you know, a child would want to watch, but they would

learn something. So he was a lone voice in the wilderness at the time, but thankfully he was given the inaugural head of children's at CBC. And what came out of that? What were some of, I guess, what would be his legacy, I guess? I mean, his legacy when you think about it is, I would say, the big ones. The friendly giant was kind of the first show that he, you know, he brought Bob Hummy from America to Toronto. They talked a lot about this idea that most children shows at the time were very loud and very crass, and they involved a lot of yelling. And, you know, they were trying to reach, let's say, as many kids as they could through

volume. Whereas Bob Hummy and Friendly Giant, you know, he looked directly into the camera and he spoke to the viewer like it was only one person and that was you. And he spoke to the viewer as if they were a friend, not a child, and he was a grown man. And these are all ideas that are very commonplace now. But at the time, it was quite revolutionary to have a show like Friendly Giant that was so, let's say, serene and conversational. And then out of that, I mean, Mr. Rogers' neighborhood, not a lot of people realize that started in Toronto. Fred Rainsbury brought Fred Rogers up here.

and then Fred Rogers brought Ernie Coombs. And so Mr. Dressup and all of the programs that came out of that really are what we call the Rainsbury Vision, which again wasn't really much more complicated than, you know, talk to talk to your viewers like they're intelligent people. And they are. A lot of Canadian icons, John Candy, Ryan Gosling, Drake, they got their start in children's television. right? Why is children's television that's such a breeding ground for talent? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, back in the day in the 20th century, if you were a budding actor and you were Canadian, it was really hard. It was really hard to get a gig. And I think children's television was

one of the few places where you could get a role. And there wasn't a lot of interference, let's say, from the brass. Like, you know, the executive producers at CBC, or, you know, some of the other networks, CTV, they were very, very focused on the adult shows and the grown-ups content. And they kind of, the kids, you know, they produced a certain number of hours a week that was mandated by the CRTC.

So they just let them run wild. And so you had somebody like Trevor Evans, who was a producer at CBC, who was going to Second City and watching Dan Aykroyd and Catherine O'Harran, and John Candy, and, you know, he said, these guys are going to be huge, but they couldn't get a job on television.

So he basically created the series for them. And then, you know, John Candy's on TVOs, cucumber as the weatherman. And I think they all loved that they could go from comedy to children's to comedy. And I think Canadian comedy is very well recognized around the world. even Mike Myers, you know, started in children's.

And so I think it is important to remember that we can produce children's television that is just as good as our comedy. I want to pluck out a quote that you include in the beginning of the book. This is from Josh Morris, and he was the creator of a YTV children's show called It's Alive. And it says, one thing I've learned is that there's a push and pull by two forces. There's a force of so-called good of people that want to teach good. kids things through television and don't want kids' brains to rot if they watch TV. And then there's the commercial forces. And those two forces tend to be across purposes. Why did you include that? Because I think when I had finished researching the last five decades of children's television,

I realized that that conflict was inherent in almost every single series, behind the scenes. And I think even something like Mr. Dressup or Sesame Street, you know, the big ones came out of that conflict where you had the people pushing the commercial interest, which is we need merchandise, we need books, we need to be, you know, as accessible to everyone as possible versus the educators who said, look, I mean, there's a limit to this, right? I mean, the fear of television when it started was that it was just going to be one long toy commercial or one long commercial for junk food. And that stuff's important. But if you're trying to communicate that to a young audience, you can't lecture them, right? You've got to be a little bit subversive. And I think the best examples that we talk about in the book were shows that understood that. And they were both entertaining and educating.

they kind of sneaked in the educational stuff so that the kid didn't realize their learning, whether it's emotional learning or rote learning, and they came away feeling different about it. The merchandising that I think some children's programs have done, that doesn't really exist here, right? I mean, like, I think you talked about just some of the legal hurdles that even prevent, like, shows that TVO has done from being available. Is that, like, can you talk a bit about that? why did these hurdles exist? I mean, it's a very unfortunate situation in Canada that the contractual obligations, let's say, are very different now than they were back in the day.

And there were not provisions given for things like home entertainment or streaming. I mean, nobody really thought beyond a couple years anybody would be interested in watching these shows again. So there's an archival problem. A lot of things weren't retaining. I mean, TVO was good, but some of the other networks not so good. And then you get into the current times, and there's just no easy or cheap way to release these shows or make them available, you know, even on YouTube. And it's sad because you look at, say, the Americans or the British who have a whole kind of cottage industry based around their.

loved children shows. I mean, Sesame Street is, you can't move, but for Sesame Street merchandise or episodes or, you know, toys. And there's really nothing like that here. And I think that's led to this kind of memory-halling of things where I think some people actually are not sure if these shows existed or if they were a figment of a, you know, a bad flu that they had and they stayed home from school and they imagined some of these things. So that was, again, the impetus to set the record straight with the book. Well, the book takes us from the 1950s all the way up to the 90s, but then after the 90s, what happens? What happens to kids' TV in the like 2000s and later on? I mean, I think it's more what happens to TV in general. You get to the year 2000,

and you suddenly have the CRTC who previously had been very stringent about giving out broadcast licenses, and they're suddenly giving them out like candy, and you have digital cable. So you have 264, I think, new channels launched in 2000, and suddenly everything's very niche. And I think part of what made television very special in the early days was there was a real sense of locality. So like we say, you felt these shows were very Canadian or this show was very Toronto. And you get into co-productions and niche casting and you lose that, right? I mean, it's not economically viable anymore to look like a show that's made in Peterborough or, you know, wherever. And then on top of that, you have the Internet starting.

And I would say, balkanizing content, right? the start of that is the internet. And then you get into social media and a couple of years later, you get into smartphones. And television is no longer the most important telecommunications tool, which it was in the 20th century. It's just a support organ now. And so children's television, it's not that it's not as good or not as relevant now. There's just so much of it. and everybody's looking at it at a different time on a different device.

We don't enjoy the shows as we did when it was a monoculture, and we saw them all at the same time. So good luck to future historians trying to make any sense of what has been going on since the year 2000. We're to wrap up our conversation, but I just wonder, you know, we've been having fun going through Memerly Lane and talking about all these great shows that we grew up watching. But is there more to this than just nostalgia for you? Absolutely. I think nostalgia is incredibly important, especially times like now when things maybe aren't great. And certainly older people look for comfort in things that happened when they were young because they weren't thinking about a mortgage or a war or how they're going to pay for their gas. But I think what's more important is the amount of work and the amount of things.

thought, I think, that went into a lot of these productions. It dissipates. It gets lost because it's not properly recorded. And I think you walk in any bookstore, there are numerous books about Hollywood films and about American bands and American TV shows. And I think Canadian popular culture is disappearing very quickly. And if there aren't more, let's say, projects that try to preserve it, it will disappear. And so it's very important to me to keep that stuff in the in the public domain. Because I think, yes, the nostalgia piece is nice, but it's also great work. And it is art. And maybe it should be recognized as art. It isn't, it's a very snobby thing to think of television as a lesser art, but it's not. That's a good

place to leave it. Ed, thank you so much for this. Thank you for your book as well. It was really good to read and I really appreciate you spending so much time with us on TVO tonight. Thank you so much. It's an honor to be at the House of TVO today. I'm Jan. Thanks for watching The Rundown. I got to know, do you watch Eurovision? Or did you have a favorite Canadian TV show when you were a kid?

Let us know. Send us an email at rundown at tbO.org or you can always drop us a comment on our YouTube page. Until then, I will see you tomorrow. If you're enjoying this series, please consider supporting TVO with a donation to make more insightful and thought-provoking podcast possible. TVO is a registered charity and you will receive a tax receipt for your gift. Visit TVO.org slash give TVO to make your donation today.