Canada Put Generative AI in the Broadcast Contract.

The Canadian Federation of Musicians and CBC ratified a General Production Agreement running from 19 September 2025 to 31 October 2027. It does the ordinary things a broadcast agreement does — sets base fees, defines what counts as a service, schedules increases. It also does something the litigation cannot: it makes generative AI a negotiated employment term rather than a question awaiting a judge.

The wage path, in full

The agreement's fee summary sets the musician's base fee — classification A1 — at C$462 from 19 September 2025, C$468 from 1 November 2025 and C$476 from 1 November 2026. The other classifications move with it: the broadcast fee and three hours' work time each run C$231, then C$234, then C$238, with proportionate rates for half and quarter broadcast fees and for one- and two-hour calls.

A leader, contractor or soloist, and a single musician engaged alone, receive double the base fee. As always, the base fee is not the invoice: pension, premiums and use payments sit in their own tables, and a service has to be classified correctly before any of them apply.

What counts as a service

The definitions are where a broadcast agreement does its real work, because they determine which rate attaches to which activity. Arranging is defined as adapting an already written composition for presentation in other than its original form — reharmonisation, paraphrasing or development so that it fully represents the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic structures, in complete score form. An audition is a performance not broadcast, used to determine suitability.

The agreement also names a category most contracts ignore. Branding Music is defined as a mnemonic or piece of music that captures a brand's identity and signals to the viewer or listener that they are watching or listening to CBC — the sound of a service or a division rather than of a programme, and expressly distinguished from theme music tied to a specific series.

That distinction is money. The short sonic signature that opens every programme in a division has, until it is named in a contract, an unhelpful tendency to be treated as incidental rather than as composed and performed work.

The AI provision

The union's ratification notice records that amendments were made to update definitions and protections reflecting today's media environment — including new recognition for Branding Music, modernised licensing provisions, and generative artificial intelligence protections.

The CFM publishes the supporting documents alongside the main agreement. What is in the public ratification announcement is the fact of the protections rather than their text, so the enforceable detail lies in the executed documents themselves, not in the summary. Anyone relying on it should read the operative wording rather than the announcement.

The significant point is structural, and it does not depend on the drafting. In the United States the same question is being contested through copyright litigation, where the outcome is binary, slow and decided by people who are not in the industry. In Canada it has been handled as a term of employment, negotiated between the parties who will live with it, with a fixed expiry date at which it can be renegotiated.

What else moved

The union identified pension improvements, wage increases, recognition for Branding Music, modernised licensing and sustainability commitments in the same round.

The scope of covered services is wide, running from arranging and orchestration through auditions to the music used to identify CBC's platforms — which is what makes the classification definitions load-bearing rather than decorative.

How to read it if you work for CBC

The agreement governs musicians engaged by CBC within its scope. It does not set a Canadian minimum for every broadcast or every concert, and it does not reach engagements outside that scope.

For a musician the practical sequence is unchanged: identify the service being performed, the duration, and every use the recording will be put to, then find the matching classification. The protection that is enforceable is the one in the executed text and its sideletters. A ratification notice is a summary, and summaries are not contracts.

The agreement expires on 31 October 2027, which is also when whatever it says about generative AI comes back to the table — by design.