The crowd hushed as the black Escalade pulled curbside in the afternoon Toronto sun.
Robbie Graham-Kuntz, the Canadian actor who plays Kip in the ubiquitous hockey drama “Heated Rivalry,” emerged from the giant SUV.
The crowd screamed and tried to get closer to him, as a security guard stretched out his arms to hold fans at bay.
“I’m so sorry I’m in your private space,” a young woman clasping a copy of “Heated Rivalry” said shyly after brushing against his chest in the fray.
The security guy smiled and let her inch a little forward.
It was a genuinely Canadian moment at the start of a night celebrating the growing powerhouse that is the country’s screen industry, at a critical moment in its history.
Canada is home to a thriving television and film scene that generates billions of dollars in revenue and employs hundreds of thousands of people. Many favorite shows were filmed here, made by Canadian crews, a part of what’s often referred to as “Hollywood North.”
But in the past year, the domestic industry has thumped its chest a little harder, particularly after the phenomenal global success of “Heated Rivalry,” a homegrown series for the local streamer, Crave, based on the romance books by the Nova Scotia author Rachel Reid.
As relations between Canada and the United States deteriorate, with President Trump regularly claiming Canada should become the 51st state, the screen industry has found itself at once wanting to assert its Canadianness and trying to grow its American business.
At the Canadian Screen Awards last month, representatives from U.S. streamers like Netflix celebrated alongside their local counterparts, regardless.
Some 700 film and television stars, producers, costume designers and all kinds of industry workers gathered on the 10th floor of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in downtown Toronto for a night that has been described as Canada’s Emmys and Oscars rolled into one, but felt more like a large, extended family gathering.
The actor Mike Myers, who was honored for his lifetime of contributions to Canadian film and television, walked from his hotel 10 minutes away and arrived with his two brothers, reflecting the casual and understated energy that characterizes the event, and the city.
“I wanna thank my mum and dad for moving to Canada,” he said clutching his statue onstage, his voice cracking. Eventually, he gave up holding back tears: “Canada, I don’t know what to say, dude, I’d literally be nothing without you.”
The emotion did not abate, as the actor Eugene Levy eulogized his frequent co-star, Catherine O’Hara. Known as Canada’s honorary mom, she died earlier this year.
“She made us proud to be Canadian. Her email handle was ‘sorryeh,’” Mr. Levy said to uproarious applause, a reference to two of Canada’s most pervasive conversational idiosyncrasies.
But alongside the heartwarming moments, the tension the industry is experiencing in Canada was also on display, and on people’s minds.
There are a number of longstanding questions about how U.S. companies like Netflix compete here. Should the Canadian government tax them to fund the making of Canadian content known as “CanCon,” or demand that a certain portion of what they create be distinctly Canadian? These have in recent months become an extension of fraught trade negotiations between the two countries.
“A country that doesn’t tell its own stories in its own way is just a market for someone else, and we’re better than that,” said George Stroumboulopoulos, one of the country’s most renowned broadcasters, before presenting the actor Hudson Williams with the award for best lead performer in a drama series, for his portrayal of Shane Hollander in “Heated Rivalry.”
Mr. Williams, who is from British Columbia, has become a global star, and his rapid ascent is seen as evidence of Canada’s hidden gems. He said he wanted to split the award with his co-star Connor Storrie, a Texan Mr. Williams labeled an “honorary Canadian.”
The show, which streamed on HBO in the United States, was partly subsidized by the Canadian taxpayer through a system that helps fund movies and television productions that are predominantly, visibly Canadian.
“Heated Rivalry” is unabashedly that, both technically, with its creators, crew and most of the cast coming from Canada, but also in its display of Canadian places, symbols and imagery. This stands in contrast to some other major Canadian shows, including the hit “Schitt’s Creek,” which are produced as generically North American, rather than specifically Canadian.
Another big winner on this night was “North of North,” a CBC production streamed on Netflix that has been renewed for a second season. The show is set in a Canadian Arctic community and is almost wholly created, acted and produced by Indigenous people from Canada, and has built a solid audience globally.
The measure of Canadianness is more than the sum of storytelling and the emotional and cultural need of Canadians to see themselves represented in film and on television.
It’s also about money.
Last month, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the industry regulator, announced that it would apply a 15 percent tax on revenue generated in Canada for major streaming companies like Netflix, to help fund domestic and Indigenous content. But the decision was blocked by the government, upsetting the entertainment industry.
“We are concerned that the federal government has sold out Canadian culture in favor of big U.S. tech interests,” the Canadian Media Producers Association, an industry group, said in response to that decision. “The free ride for the big U.S. tech giants must end.”
At the awards ceremony, the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television acted as neutral ground: Its members include representatives from both U.S. and domestic streamers, as well as Canadian screen workers.
“We’re kind of like Canadian Switzerland,” said the Academy’s chief executive, Tammy Frick, in an interview.
She added that the intense debate unfolding over funding, taxes and content requirements in Canada was necessary. “Streamers are reinvesting in local content in France, Germany, other countries,” she said. “What we’re asking is, what’s the right model for Canada? And there’s going to have to be some concessions.”
As that fight continues, the one over defining Canada’s artistic and storytelling identity seems to be more settled. It is, in great part, distinct from that of the United States.
“Canadians are champions of the outsiders, the overlooked,” said Mae Martin, an acclaimed Canadian comedian and actor who stars in the Netflix drama Wayward. “And that outsider status is a gift to creativity.”
