Prime Minister Mark Carney with Hudson Williams, star of the TV series ‘Heated Rivalry,’ at the Prime Time conference gala in Ottawa, on Thursday.PATRICK DOYLE/The Canadian Press
Mark Carney got fleeced on Thursday at a television and film industry event in Ottawa.
Ahead of an evening panel at the Prime Time conference at the Westin hotel, Heated Rivalry’s Hudson Williams made a surprise appearance on the red carpet next to the Prime Minister.
The Canadian heartthrob had brought along a Team Canada fleece jacket – the very one his hockey-player character Shane Hollander wore in the hit Crave romance – and slipped it onto Carney’s shoulders.
“This is true soft power,” the Prime Minister joked, as he tried the plush coat on and, as the kids used to say, broke the internet.
It was more than a joke, though, really.
In truth, the Canadian Media Producers Association and Heated Rivalry producers Jacob Tierney and Brendan Brady of Accent Aigu Entertainment demonstrated the soft power of culture in orchestrating this highly meme-able moment.
The pictures and video of Carney hugging Williams – and with the actor’s leg wrapped around him – that quickly spread on social media through Heated Rivalry’s rabid international fan network may have seemed a gift to the Liberal Leader. They reinforced the image he’s been cultivating of being a progressive middle-power ruler in an age of unenlightenment elsewhere.
Indeed, online, the heart-warming happy images became yet another contrast with American President Donald Trump – who had his own red carpet appearance on Thursday night, at the so-called Trump-Kennedy Center in Washington for the premiere of a documentary about his wife.
Melania was produced by Amazon MGM Studios seemingly in order to please the President, rather than the box office – what the satirists at The Daily Show last night called a “$40-million docu-bribe.”
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Meanwhile, here was Carney in his nation’s capital expressing pride that Canada, through arm’s length funding agencies, had financially supported an internationally successful spicy gay romance that, its creators have said, would have been watered down if American producers had been involved.
“Look, I’m a politician: I’m not above taking credit for the Canadian funding that helped you share this story with the world,” the Prime Minister said – tongue-in-cheek – in a speech to producers before his “new best friend” Williams took part in a panel.
He continued in that manner: “I might not have been here when the decision was made, but I’m here now. So, yeah, I green lit this thing; I stood up to the Americans.”
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With those comments, Heated Rivalry’s producers had Carney exactly where they wanted him. The fleece charm offensive had worked to their own aims, too.
At the beginning of the day at Prime Time, Tierney and Brady had in fact talked about the fear that Carney’s government might not be willing to stand up to the Americans on cultural issues in a panel discussion hosted by CMPA board chair Kyle Irving.
Hudson Williams presents Prime Minister Mark Carney with a fleece from the show ‘Heated Rivalry.’PATRICK DOYLE/The Canadian Press
In a recent interview, Canadian Identity and Culture Minister Marc Miller had said that Ottawa might be “flexible” about the Online Streaming Act in upcoming trade talks with the United States.
And so, Irving prompted Tierney and Brady to talk about their thoughts on that piece of legislation – which, when implemented, will make large streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video contribute 5 per cent of their annual revenue to funds that support the production of Canadian content – being used as a bargaining chip in Canada–U.S.–Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) negotiations.
“It’d be really, really bad if we lost it,” said Tierney, who is also the writer and director of Heated Rivalry. “Every country in Europe has this. I don’t think we’re asking for anything unreasonable here.”
Heated Rivalry creators defend Online Streaming Act at Ottawa conference
Tierney is right. If anything, Canada’s Online Streaming Act seems timid compared to regulations enacted by other middle powers on streamers.
As of Jan. 1, for instance, Australia joined the club by requiring subscription video-on-demand services with more than 1 million subscribers in the country to spend 10 per cent of their total local program expenditure – or 7.5 per cent of Australian revenue – on specific types of AussieCon.
A Canadian producer’s comments on streaming regulations at a conference doesn’t usually make headlines – but everything to do with Heated Rivalry does at the moment.
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So, by the time Miller appeared at the Prime Time conference for an interview with George Stroumboulopoulos yesterday afternoon, the pressure was on and a wire story was out.
Every mention of Heated Rivalry – Miller said he had watched it all and it was an “amazing show,” though his wife kept wondering why the main characters didn’t close the drapes (good question) – had become an opportunity to press him on the Online Streaming Act.
“I totally understand their perspective,” Miller said to journalists after. “I think we share the same objective.”
You could sense in real time a shift in the narrative around the beleaguered, belated legislation.
Suddenly it wasn’t just a dry regulatory matter – or a bargaining chip – but connected to pride in the hottest show in recent Canadian history.
Did something shift? By later that evening, just before Carney and Williams took to the red carpet, Tierney said: “I feel strangely confident in this current government.”
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Brady confirmed then that part of the reason why he and Tierney came to Prime Time was specifically to show their support for the Online Streaming Act; they may have a massive global phenomenon on their hands, but the overall television industry in Canada remains in a precarious financial position.
“We think it’s incredibly important to continue to have Canadian stories being told in a system that belongs to Canadians and doesn’t have international interference,” he said.
So, if you want to wear the fleece, you’ve got to get behind Team Canada.