Kicking off with an obligatory Drake joke and ending with the Canadian entertainment industry sending a message straight to the White House by awarding the dark Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice the Best Motion Picture trophy, the 13th annual Canadian Screen Awards offered enough talking points during its live gala Sunday to fill a 51st state.
Before the CBC decides to invent a random hockey game next year to air instead of the 2026 CSAs, The Globe and Mail presents the best, worst, and weirdest moments from Canada’s equivalent of the Oscars, Emmys and a couple other award shows squeezed into a single two-hour evening.
Host-busters
Comedian Lisa Gilroy possessed the necessary energy and commitment as the evening’s host, if not quite the material. While she led with an enjoyably self-deprecating energy (“From the first Canadian Screen Awards hosted by comedy legend Martin short to me, Instagram holder Lisa Gilroy…”), a wan pre-taped sketch featuring actor Will Sasso failed to deliver the humour needed to get the audience immediately on her side. And as the evening stretched on, her gags oscillated between wobbly and desperate.
I’ll award bonus points for Gilroy’s joke about Rumours star Cate Blanchett being in the house (with the camera instead cutting to a mannequin creepy enough to headline its own Guy Maddin movie). But the CSAs, especially in this “Canada-is-not-for-sale” edition, needed bite. We got baby teeth.
Elbows up-ish?
While the CSAs arrived in an era of acute geopolitical anxiety – even if no one onstage dared to utter the word “tariff” – the Academy Of Canadian Cinema & Television voters sure did feel generous toward our U.S. neighbours when it came to doling out the statuettes. American Sebastian Stan took home the Best Performance in a Leading Role (Drama) CSA for his sly performance as Trump in The Apprentice (a Canada/Ireland/Denmark coproduction that was shot in Toronto), while Stan’s costar and fellow Yank Jeremy Strong nabbed the Best Performance in a Supporting Role (Drama) in a separate CSAs ceremony Saturday. (Surprise: neither actors were in Toronto to accept.)
Meanwhile, Citytv’s Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent – a thoroughly Canadian production, albeit one that only exists because of its American mothership – won three CSAs, including Best Drama Series. And though Cate Blanchett is Australian – and excellent – it cannot help but feel strange to see the Rumours star triumph in the Best Performance in a Leading Role (Comedy) category over seven unambiguously Canadian actors.
Keep Winnipeg weird
Accepting the award for Achievement in Directing, Universal Language’s Matthew Rankin gave the best acceptance speech of the night. First addressing the audience in a succession of English, French, and Farsi, Rankin shared his appreciation for his dual Quebec and Manitoba backgrounds (“Keep Winnipeg weird”) before moving on to underline his film’s themes. “Every day, there are new Berlin Walls shooting up all around us. And if our film stands for anything, it stands for how kindness can in fact be a radical gesture,” Rankin said. “Art can do something that politics can’t do. And so I want to salute everyone in this room for the work that you do. To work in culture is to choose community over solitude, and that’s very precious.”
Although The Apprentice producer Daniel Bekerman gets the unofficial best speech runner-up award, opening his remarks by addressing his (absent) director Ali Abbasi: “Ali, I told you – you have to come to Canada if you want to find some guts in this industry.”
(CB)C-minus for production design
The 2024 CSAs were coming off a horrendous edition that was entirely pre-taped (much of it in New York City), so I was willing to cut the CBC some slack last year when it came to its sparse and rather cheap-looking stage inside the network’s Studio 40 in Toronto. But it appears as if the entire set-up was simply recycled for Sunday’s show, including the back-breaking fold-up chairs that attendees were forced to sit on. It is no secret that things are tight over at the CBC, but perhaps producers can shake down some of the Dragons’ Den benefactors next year to spruce things up.
Night of 100 stars, give or take
Despite the Blanchett fake-out, there were some genuinely big names in the house Sunday. Hey there to Kiefer Sutherland (appearing unannounced onstage after producers rolled a tribute to his father Donald), Jason Priestley, and a gracious Manny Jacinto (The Good Place, Star Wars: The Acolyte), who was presented with the Radius Award (given to a Canadian film or TV professional who is “currently making an impact internationally”).
Although how fun would it have been if Mike Myers, the most vocal homegrown entertainer out there fighting for Canada’s good name, would have popped in, too? Perhaps he was busy filming another Mark Carney ad.
Shrouded in mystery
While the Canadian academy says that it constantly reevaluates its nomination and voting process every year, this edition’s winners – as well as the titles that walked away with little or no hardware – suggests a top-to-bottom overhaul is needed for 2026. How, for instance, did David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds – easily the best Canadian film of the year – only leave the CSAs with two awards (for best sound mixing and sound editing)?
Meanwhile, Rankin’s wonderful comedy Universal Language, the favourite for Best Picture going into Sunday night, was usurped by the Trump drama The Apprentice, which is as big an upset as far as the CSAs typically go. (Although as noted above, Rankin won the best director CSA, one of the six awards that the film scored over the course of a weekend’s worth of events.)
And then Atom Egoyan’s psychological drama Seven Veils, the Canadian filmmaker’s strongest work in years, only snagged one award, for best original score. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose, but Cronenberg, Egoyan, and Rankin’s latest works are beloved by critics and audiences alike, here and abroad. Giving the three of them something of a cold shoulder feels dispiriting and confounding.
Like funny, haha? Or funny, boohoo?
Hopefully the members of the now-empty writers rooms that staffed CTV’s Children Ruin Everything and CBC’s Run the Burbs can find the humour in the fact that their series won top awards despite their shows no longer existing. Run the Burbs star Andrew Phung won Best Lead Performer (Comedy), even though the sitcom aired its last episode more than a year ago, in April, 2024, after getting cancelled in its third season. And while Children Ruin Everything ended after four seasons due to what Bell Media described as creative and not financial reasons, it still felt awkward to see the show win four CSAs (including Best Comedy Series) three months after it aired its series finale.
