In issue #124’s edition of Policy Matters, reflecting on the government’s then-recent decision to rescind the Digital Services Tax (DST) amid trade pressure from the United States, I forecast that the Online Streaming Act might ultimately face a similar fate.
That calculation did not demand unique predictive powers. While the DST and Online Streaming Act differ in certain particulars, both instruments were conceived to compel large U.S. tech companies to pay their fair shares on revenues earned from Canadian users. Unsurprisingly, those tech companies pushed back strongly on both measures, and so too have U.S. trade negotiators.
That pushback has upped the challenge for the Carney administration as it navigates a tough negotiations with the U.S., traditionally our largest trading partner, at a moment when the economic stakes extend far beyond the screen sector. Cultural policy cannot be considered in isolation from the enormous leverage the U.S. wields, nor from the Trump government’s aggressive posture.
But neither can we permit U.S. pressure to determine the outcome of a cultural policy process that Canadians have spent years developing. Canada has long insisted on a cultural exemption in its trade relationships for a reason: cultural policy cannot become a bargaining chip in negotiations with a much larger market. And yet, in recent months, we have watched significant threads of Canada’s new broadcasting framework begin to unravel.
In June, the federal government sent the CRTC back to the drawing board on its decision requiring online streaming services to devote 15 per cent of their Canadian revenues to Canadian programming. More recently, Ottawa signalled that it also intends to set aside the CRTC’s base contribution order, which would have required foreign streamers to contribute to funds supporting Canadian production.
Despite the strong sense of DST déjà vu, however, the government is not performing a full about-face on this occasion. Recognizing that it would be disastrous to oblige the screen industry to entirely forgo the revenues the streamers had been directed to contribute, the government is pledging to partially replace them. It has promised $600 million in annual public funding to offset some of the investment that would have flowed through the CRTC’s framework. At a moment of instability in Canadian film and television, that commitment is significant and welcome. The government is not turning its back on screen creators.
Still, the government’s pivot represents a troubling shift in who is being asked to foot the bill. Canadian broadcasters have long been required to reinvest a portion of their revenues into Canadian programming. The logic behind extending comparable obligations to streaming platforms was neither novel nor radical: Netflix, Prime Video, Disney, and their competitors have become major participants in the Canadian broadcasting marketplace. It is fair that they share responsibility for sustaining the system from which they profit.
That principle matters beyond the question of how many dollars ultimately flow into the system.
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Public funding is indispensable to Canadian culture. It is also vulnerable to changing governments, fiscal pressures, and competing priorities. Regulatory obligations are different. They embed cultural investment into the rules of doing business in Canada. Replacing one with the other risks turning what had been understood as a shared responsibility into one borne disproportionately by Canadian taxpayers.
There is also a procedural question we must not overlook. Canada did not arrive at the current broadcasting framework overnight. Parliament debated the Online Streaming Act at length. The CRTC then undertook years of consultations and hearings to determine how it should be implemented. Organizations across the screen sector—including DOC—spent enormous time with limited resources preparing submissions, appearing before the Commission, and attempting, in good faith, to help build a framework for the next generation of Canadian broadcasting policy. It’s alarming to observe the outcomes of those public consultations now being overwritten before the resulting framework could even take effect.
On August 13, DOC joined nearly 50 organizations from across Canada’s screen sector in an open letter to Prime Minister Carney and Culture Minister Marc Miller. The signatories ranged from producer associations and labour organizations to festivals and groups representing historically underrepresented creators whose works would have been supported through the distribution of funds collected through this policy. Despite our different constituencies, the central argument was straightforward: public investment is welcome, but it should not become a substitute for meaningful and enforceable obligations on the streaming companies themselves.
The letter also urged the government to preserve the CRTC’s 15 per cent Canadian programming expenditure requirement as a benchmark. That figure is not incidental. Canadian broadcasters still face substantially higher obligations than those that had been imposed on the streamers. Asking enormously profitable global companies to reinvest a meaningful portion of the revenues they generate here is an entirely reasonable price of admission to the Canadian market.
For documentary filmmakers, there is a further dimension to all of this.
The CRTC has already eliminated the Programs of National Interest framework, which for years provided specific protections for documentary, drama, and children’s programming. The Commission’s new approach placed greater faith in ownership rules, discoverability and overall investment requirements to deliver Canadian programming. Documentary filmmakers have reason to be skeptical.
Public-interest documentary has never been sustained solely by market logic. Films that investigate institutions, preserve historical memory, document communities far from centres of power, or simply take artistic and political risks are not traditionally the projects most likely to win a competition for ratings. That is precisely why Canadian cultural policy has historically done more than simply put money into a pot and allow the market to determine what gets made.
As Ottawa reconsiders the obligations placed on streamers, it also needs to answer a second question: what kinds of Canadian programming is the new system intended to sustain?
This is a key consideration as the government determines how its promised $600 million in annual support will be allocated. Documentary should not have to compete for attention only after the architecture of the new system has already been designed. Nor should Indigenous creators, Black and racialized creators, official-language minority communities, and other constituencies that were intended to benefit from the CRTC’s contribution framework become collateral damage as Ottawa changes course.
None of this requires pretending that Canada is negotiating from a position of unlimited strength.
The Trump administration has made its hostility toward Canadian digital and cultural policies abundantly clear. A Canadian government confronting tariff threats and much larger economic questions must make unenviable choices across a range of important sectors. Those of us advocating for cultural policy must be candid about that reality.
But pragmatism cuts both ways. Canada cannot credibly speak about cultural sovereignty while steadily removing the obligations imposed on some of the largest foreign companies operating in our cultural marketplace.
Nor is the choice simply between antagonizing Washington and protecting Canadian culture. There is ample room between those poles to design a system that gives streamers flexibility while maintaining the basic expectation that they contribute meaningfully to Canadian programming.
The government has said repeatedly that it remains committed to Canadian culture. DOC takes that commitment seriously. The question now is what form it will take.
We will soon get a clearer indication. The government’s forthcoming policy direction will give the CRTC new instructions as it revisits these decisions. Ottawa should use that opportunity to preserve a meaningful contribution requirement for streaming services, ensure that public-interest documentary and other culturally significant programming receive deliberate support, and explain how the communities and creators intended to benefit from the original framework will fare under whatever replaces it. Those who benefit from Canadian audiences must continue to share responsibility for supporting Canadian stories.
Canadian cultural policy has always involved a mixture of public investment and private obligation. Modernizing that system is necessary, but allowing one half of that equation to quietly disappear is not.
