In a 2022 article, Barry Hertz of The Globe and Mail praised the program as a diverse overview of the creative risk-taking in Canadian cinema, and a worthwhile contrast to the limited scope of conventional commercial film distribution.
For the 2014 festival, TIFF introduced a People's Choice Award for the feature film program, modeled on the existing Toronto International Film Festival People's Choice Award and conducted in the same manner.
[9] In 2018, TIFF dropped the January festival, instead introducing a new model in which each film receives its own standalone theatrical run at the Lightbox in the following year.
[10] They subsequently dropped this model, and returned to screening the honored films at a dedicated Canada's Top Ten screening series in the winter programming season,[11] although the series has not reintroduced a People's Choice award as of 2024.
Films highlighted in yellow below were the winners of the People's Choice award at the Canada's Top Ten minifestival.