CBC’s Eurovision head explains why bbno$ has a chance to represent Canada, but Angine de Poitrine is a no-go

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It’s going be a less than restful Labour Day weekend for Canadian singers looking to become global stars, as the vocally inclined scramble to apply to become the country’s first official Eurovision Song Contest competitor.

Pop singers, rappers, crooners and country artists have until Wednesday to submit a video of a vibrant live performance – and another explaining why they are the best artist to represent Canada – to a CBC/Radio-Canada portal that opened only on Aug. 31.

After that, the national public broadcaster will have eight months to pick a contender worthy of the glitz and camp of Eurovision, commission a song for them and get ready for one of its biggest bilingual broadcasts ever, live from host city Burgas, Bulgaria, in May.

That’s not any less stressful a deadline for Jennifer Dettman, executive director of unscripted content at the CBC who now also holds the lofty title of Head of Delegation, Eurovision Song Contest Canada.

“Right off the bat, we knew we were working against a tight timeline and that we were building something that was completely new in our music ecosystem, so we did do a lot of consultation,” Dettman said in an interview with The Globe and Mail this week.

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Organized by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), an alliance of public service media organizations, the Eurovision Song Contest began in 1956 to generate a sense of shared culture after the division and destruction of the Second World War.

It’s held Europe together – sort of – for 70 years since while expanding its reach off the continent. (The first-ever Eurovision Song Contest Asia – yes, really – is taking place in Bangkok in November.)

CBC execs spoke with long-participating European broadcasters in Australia, Switzerland, Finland, and the UK about how they pick their submitted songs, while Radio-Canada counterparts checked in with those in France and in Belgium.

In an ideal situation, there would be a national song competition in the lead-up to Canada’s first Eurovision participation, as is the case in most countries that take part.

A reality TV show following that competition would also drum up interest in Eurovision across the land – globally, the show is watched by more viewers than the Super Bowl, but it’s still a relatively niche interest here, where it has been live-streamed on YouTube since 2015.

Dettman says that a reality-show approach to Eurovision is not off the table for future years – and that CBC/Radio-Canada has commissioned a documentary to air in the lead up to 2027 to prime Canadians on the competition’s wacky history.

Because CBC/Radio-Canada only became a full member of the EBU on June 25, there was not enough runway to get any kind of national competition up and running to select a winner for 2027.

So instead, CBC/Radio-Canada will be choosing the singing competitor through an internal process – the second-most-common way national contenders are selected – with a smidge of public consultation.

First, the broadcaster’s music teams and TV teams will whittle down the submissions to a short-list of those who already have significant experience and, ideally, a European following.

Then, those finalists will be announced later in the fall – followed by a public digital vote, balanced out by a music industry jury vote to pick the winner.

This artist-first approach is how Eurovision is done in Bulgaria, says Dettman - and it’s a method that certainly worked in 2026, as the country won the competition.

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The selected singer will then be part of what Dettman calls an “artist-centered” approach to crafting their eventual Eurovision performance – involved in the songwriting and selection of a creative director.

CBC/Radio-Canada has mandated that the eventual song will be performed in both English and French (at least). But this doesn’t mean that the lead vocalist has to be an already bilingual singer like Charlotte Cardin or Rêve.

Dettman says it’s possible the winning artist could choose one or more other artists to collaborate with in different languages on stage.

So bbno$ – the wacky, often viral, very Eurovision-y rapper whose name is pronounced “baby no money” – is not out of luck despite having made videos making fun of his poor French.

But the participation of Angine de Poitrine, the often mooted popular polka-dotted Québecois drum-and-guitar band is a non-starter.

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This is not only because they are ostensibly aliens and do not speak any terrestrial language – but because the two play instruments as an integral part of their act and Eurovision rules require backing tracks to be recorded in service of quick set changes.

Eurovision’s powers-that-be have been softening on the issue of live instruments in recent years. Italian singer-songwriter Lucio Corsi was permitted to play his harmonica in 2025, and Finland’s Linda Lampenius got a special waiver to play her violin in 2026.

There’s plenty to riddle out about Eurovision – which is a spectacle run with all the bureaucratic vigour you’d expect from a European alliance of public broadcasters.

Ultimately, the number one job for CBC/Radio-Canada this year is familiarizing the country – and its music community – with the minutiae of Eurovision.

“We thought this is the best plan for year one, and then we’re working with the music community to see how would we build out year two that might take a more traditional approach of picking the song,” Dettman says.