The Writers Guild of Canada has released a new Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Report with 2021 data. The initiative is part of the WGC and its Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA) Committee’s efforts to work towards addressing issues of historic underrepresentation in Canadian television. (Diversity groups are defined by the WGC as Indigenous, Black, LGBTQ2S, People of Colour, People with Disabilities.)
The new report provides membership data from 2017 to 2021 and includes contract data from 52 live-action and 36 animated series that started production in 2021, in addition to the 342 series previously covered in the period from 2017 to 2020.
The data shows some marked increases in 2021, including:
- The percentage of diverse members joining the Guild continues to grow, with 59% of new members identifying as diverse in 2021.
- The percentage of WGC diverse writers working on TV has increased steadily from 18% in 2017 to 35% in 2021. The increase is largely explained by a higher participation of Black writers and writers of colour.
- In live action, 39% of writers identified as diverse and held 45% of the jobs in 2021, while in animation, 30% of writers identified as diverse and held 34% of jobs in 2021.