CBC Arts50%
‘I don’t get excited about The Tragically Hip’: This legendary Canadian music manager’s issues with CanCon 8%
By Sabina Wex0%
5/19/2026, 8:23:12 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 31 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Authority, Post Hoc (False Cause), and Attempt to Sell a Product or Service, with Anecdotal as the most egregious example at 22.5% saturation with 135 hits. Analysis detected 977 faulty-reasoning hits from 600 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 24.3% and a BS Rank of 8% (15,597 of 16,813 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 92.80% of the article peer group.
Bruce Allen’s management roster reads like a history of Canadian popular music: Bryan Adams, Anne Murray, Bachman-Turner Overdrive and Michael Bublé.
After more than 50 years of working in the Canadian music industry, the Departure Festival recently honoured Allen with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
But the legendary Canadian manager feels that the country can sometimes limit its artists.
Allen believes this is particularly true with Canadian Content regulations, which require broadcasters in the country to ensure that a certain percentage of their programming is Canadian.
“I believe music is global,” he tells Q’s Tom Power.
“There's more to it than just Canada.
If you got some great music, share it.
Get out there.”
When one of Allen’s former clients, Canadian rockstar Bryan Adams, released his song (Everything I Do) I Do It for You in 1991, it went to No. 1 in several countries.
But the Canadian government didn’t mark it as CanCon because it had non-Canadian writers on it.
Adams responded to this a few months later: “The Canadian government should just take a step out of the music business entirely.”
He added that CanCon requirements “breed mediocrity.”
“[Bryan Adams] wanted to be a big artist.
He wanted to go to England, he wanted to go to Australia — and he's still doing it to this day,” Allen says.
“That's what he believes is success, not just getting a government-backed chart to make sure you can get on the playlist.
And that's what we got in Canada.”
Allen contrasts Adams’s success with the example of The Tragically Hip.
“I don't get excited about The Tragically Hip,” he says.
“I believe The Tragically Hip was a band that went across the country and got funded by everybody here up in Canada….
But you know what?
They didn't make an impact anywhere else.”
Allen understands that CanCon has given a lot of young bands their shot and doesn’t want to take away the program.
But, he’d like to see it changed.
“What I would do with something like that is, ‘OK, you get three chances.
You don't make it, then you're not going to get it funded anymore,’” he explains.
Allen himself has sympathy for these musicians, as he’s seen Canadian artists on their last legs.
When Randy Bachman left The Guess Who, he was blacklisted across the country.
His new band, Brave Belt, couldn’t get a gig because bookers across the country remained loyal to The Guess Who.
So Bachman called Allen, who was a Vancouver booker at the time, and one of the few who wasn’t blacklisting the Canadian rockstar.
Bachman asked Allen for some gigs, and eventually asked him to be his manager.
Allen had never managed anyone before — much less a guy who was in the first Canadian band to land a No. 1 song on the American charts.
“He just gave me a chance, and we took a shot and it kind of worked,” Allen says.
“He brought me through the business.
And I learned about it by talking to him all the time….
I really got a lot to thank from him, thankful that he did for me.”
Listen to the full interview with Bruce Allen to hear him discuss his long career, why Michael Bublé signed with him, and how he’s slowing down (but not stopping).
The full interview with Bruce Allen is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power.
Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Bruce Allen produced by Stuart Berman.
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.