this post was submitted on 16 May 2025

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Big streamers argue at CRTC hearing they shouldn't have Canadian content obligations (www.cbc.ca)

submitted 1 week ago by HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works to c/canada@lemmy.ca

41 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A group representing major foreign streaming companies told a hearing held by Canada's broadcasting regulator on Friday that those companies shouldn't be expected to fulfil the same responsibilities as traditional broadcasters when it comes to Canadian content.

The Motion Picture Association-Canada, which represents large streamers like Netflix, Paramount, Disney and Amazon, said the regulator should be flexible in modernizing its definition of Canadian content.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is holding a two-week public hearing on a new definition of Canadian content that began Wednesday. The proceeding is part of its work to implement the Online Streaming Act — and it is bringing tensions between traditional players and large foreign streamers out in the open.

top 41 comments

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[–] TribblesBestFriend@startrek.website 55 points 1 week ago

God I hate them. « We’re the future » they said, they’re only more privatized bullshit and bubble you cannot escape.

They’re just worst than cable TV

[–] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 34 points 1 week ago (1 children)

As a Canadian in 2025, I have cancelled almost all of my US web services including streaming services. Apple still has there hands in my pocket for some 50G icloud stuff, I have been trying to offload all of my stuff but it takes time.

I have turned to a pirates life for some things other things I just use my pihole to block ads I would love it if I could setup a system on my LAN that I could have ad free streaming music on. I also wish youtube had a Canadian or a not US competitor that came close to the same things.

We all need to stand behind the CRTC and cancel the US streaming services.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Arr Stack and CBC Gem.

[–] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 days ago

Yes I have gotten in to the Arr apps, and I pay for CBC Gem.

[–] walktheplank@lemmy.world 28 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Yo ho ho. It's a pirate's life for me. 20 years plus. We buy from the little guy and do not reciprocate copyright law in our house.

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You better pirate at least 20% domestic content, or they'll come for bittorrent next!

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I seed CanCon. 🍁

[–] nik282000@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago

Facebox argued that piracy is ok! Good enough for a billionaire, good enough for me!

[–] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 24 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They must be expected to face the same requirements.

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works -1 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Literally how.

[–] Enkers@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Every tenth episode you have to watch Letterkenny.

But honestly, it says in the article:

Earlier Friday, Canadian media company Corus urged the CRTC to require traditional broadcasters and online players to pay the same amount into the Canadian content system. The broadcaster, which owns Global TV, said both should contribute 20 per cent of their revenue toward Canadian content.

Currently, large English-language broadcasters must contribute 30 per cent of revenues to Canadian programming, and the CRTC last year ordered streaming services to pay five per cent of their annual Canadian revenues to a fund devoted to producing Canadian content.

The foreign streaming services are fighting that rule in court and Netflix, Paramount and Apple pulled out of the CRTC hearing earlier this week.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

Would you look at that, pretty straightforward.

[–] Penny7@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

Considering how popular Schitt's Creek is among the people I know in America, Schitt's Creek could also be another option, hehe.

[–] Penny7@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

For every $1B (CAD) of revenue FROM CANADIAN SUBSCRIBERS ONLY they currently are supposed to allocate $50M (CAD) - that's that 5% that enkers shared from the article.

The revenue numbers I saw for 2024 had Canada and America lumped together as one region, and that was $17.17B (assuming USD here), overall revenue $39B (USD?). America always has higher revenue numbers than Canada so let's say $5B (CAD) came from Canadians then they'd need to allocate $250M (CAD) to their content creation.

In 2024 Netflix spent $16B (USD?) on creating content...I'd say that $250M (CAD) is doable. Hell, $500M (CAD) is doable if Canadians contributed $10B (CAD) to their coffers. ($500M (CAD) is almost $360M (USD) at today's exchange rate....)

I don't know about Paramount or Apple's numbers, but 5% of what CANADIANS give to any of them is more than doable.

[–] kent_eh@lemmy.ca 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If you expect to be allowed to take money from the Canadian economy, you have to contribute some value back into the Canadian economy.

Over the entire history of this country, there have been too many foreign companies swoop in, undercut the local industry, take over the market, and suck out all the profits and leave nothing but waste behind.

[–] Kelsenellenelvial@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 days ago

I’m torn. With broadcasting there’s an argument that the bandwidth is publicly owned so there should be some oversight in the content that’s transmitted. Mandating Canadian content here seems okay, kind of like how we control .ca domains and have some say in who gets to use them. For streaming though it seems to be private infrastructure, it’s been built using public funds, but the people running the infrastructure aren’t really making decisions about the content it caries. They just lease it out to anybody with minimal oversight. It’d be kind of like mandating that some% of phone calls need to be Canadian content.

Then again, we do control the .ca domains so we might argue that foreign companies using them should make some effort to carry or promote Canadian content. Get too restrictive though and companies just shut down the .ca domain and make us use the .com version which we can’t really control.

[+] pixxelkick@lemmy.world -11 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I think trying to label on demand streaming as a public broadcaster is dumb.

You can't control what people prefer to watch.

Broadcasters had limitations cuz you can only broadcast 1 thing at a time on a channel

You couldn't play more than 1 TV show on the same channel, obviously.

But Netflix can serve 1000 different TV shows to 1000 different households simultaneously.

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 20 points 1 week ago

It's about budget allocation and it's pretty fucking dumb that they can profit off of Canadian customers but party taxes on those revenues outside of Canada. Want to offer your services in Canada? Pay taxes in Canada, reinvest the profit in Canada or simply fuck off.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The effect is similar in both cases. Even if there's choice for everyone to watch what they want but most of the content is US-based, Canadian content doesn't get enough views, doesn't make enough revenue and isn't made anymore. Freedom of choice can mask a lot of undesirable effects. We want to keep Canadian content alive.

[–] Tiger666@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Small mind thinking.

[–] i_love_FFT@jlai.lu 2 points 6 days ago

It's definitely possible to control what people prefer to watch. For example by spending on ads, or by providing more production budget to the things you want people to prefer.

[+] nik282000@lemmy.ca -22 points 1 week ago (2 children)

CanCon for streaming is bullshit. Does every message board have to have a percentage of Canadian posts? Does Twitch have to have a percentage of Canadian Gamers? The Canadian-ized versions of streaming sites are always a step down, removing shows in favour of Bell media shovelware.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

No, it means large streaming services have to pay some of their Canadian revenue towards CanCon.

[+] nik282000@lemmy.ca -11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Have you ever used a VPN to compare the selection available to Canada vs the US?

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If you like American content so much, you can move to the US.

[–] nik282000@lemmy.ca -2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Or, I can continue to use the internet in such a way that neither our, nor the US government, can track or limit my media consumption.

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Sure. But the next time you want to watch a Canadian movie or series and you can't find it on any platform, or that your favourite studio or artist is quitting because they don't receive any revenue, don't fucking complain.

[–] nik282000@lemmy.ca 0 points 6 days ago

This is already the case. Canadian media corps do not help Canadian artists, Like every other media corp their job is to siphon wealth away from talented people, except in Canada they hide behind fake national pride.

There are loads of Canadian movies and TV shows that are not available to stream or even buy on disk. If you're lucky you can get a used DVD on eBay. This media is lost, no one will get to enjoy it and paying Bell more will not bring it back.

[–] Someone@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 week ago

That's not a can-con issue though, it's a rights licensing issue.

[+] kbal@fedia.io -23 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Canada's broadcasting regulator

Netflix is not a broadcaster. It's not even like a broadcaster. Broadcasting means you are casting things ... broadly. Throwing seeds into the field without caring about where each individual one lands. Transmitting a signal that anyone can tune in to if they're in range.

The streaming services are sending individual streams of bits to specific users over IP. Nobody is in danger of receiving them unless they've subscribed to the service. They won't cause any radio interference. They do not use up valuable public spectrum. Stop pretending they're broadcasters. Broadcasters are well on their way to being obsolete and that's both acceptable and inevitable.

Go ahead and make them do Canadian Content somehow if you must, but I worry that persisting with this fundamental misconception about how streaming services work doesn't seem likely to lead towards good regulation in the long run.

[–] SincerityIsCool@lemmy.ca 30 points 1 week ago (3 children)

This isn't a technical issue, it's a sociocultural one. Streaming services fill the same role so some of the same policies still make sense.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 week ago

Absolutely. It matters enormously what kind of content is available and for example what is shown on the all-important carousel on the Netflix home screen. These services clearly have enormous power to get people to watch different kinds of content according to corporate priorities. I end up watching through no intentional effort a lot more Canadian content when I open CBC Gem compared to Netflix.

[–] kbal@fedia.io -5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's not just minor (or major, such as the limits of electromagnetic spectrum) technical differences. The streaming services — unlike cable TV — are not serving the main function that traditional television broadcasts did. There is no "channel 4" to tune in to any more. Not in this household anyway, they cut off the broadcast signals that used to reach here many years ago. Some of the big streaming services do live streams, in which case they're getting a little closer to traditional broadcaster territory in terms of their function, but for the most part it's video on demand which is clearly different.

Some more different than others of course. The average youtube video probably gets about zero views. Even videos pretty near the top of the popularity charts might usually have at most one person watching at any given time. How is that anything like broadcasting?

I think they ought to be treated more like social media companies. Twitter does video, is it a broadcaster? Whatever it is, it poses problems for us that are more like those of the streaming services.

[–] Penny7@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That comparison is apples to oranges. (They're both fruit, but they're different types of fruit.)

Both socials and streaming show videos, but they're different types of platforms.

With social media that has videos, the users create the content, not the platform. Aside from so called Community Guidelines, they don't control what's created or by who. And as long as there are Canadians on the platform creating content then Canadian content is being created anyway.

Whereas with streaming, the platform controls what content is on them since they either license it from other companies or they create it themselves. They spend money on all of the content on their platform, so they should be able to budget out some money for Canadian content just like they do for American-based content or any other culture/country's content out there.

They can't be compared simply on the basis of 'they both show videos'.

[–] kbal@fedia.io -3 points 1 week ago

I'm just saying the divide between the two isn't so clear, and things are still evolving. Things aren't so clear for the CRTC either:

the Commission will continue to consult on the role and importance of online undertakings that broadcast user-generated content, along with the underlying question of how to define terms such as “social media service.”

[+] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works -6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

What, like if you binge a whole season of Stranger Things, you have to watch at least two episodes of Murdoch Mysteries?

The policies for domestic broadcasting literally do not make sense - not over sociopolitical objections, but for plain technical reasons. Streaming does not work like broadcasting. You can't make an American video-on-demand company produce Canadian content, almost by definition. You cannot reasonably make any streaming service show people a certain percentage of domestic content, because they're not in charge of what people watch.

[–] Enkers@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

That's... not what anyone is suggesting. They just want streaming services to also have to contribute a % of their revenue to CanCon, just like traditional broadcasters do.

[–] healthetank@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago

Tell me you didn't read the article without telling me...

Currently, large English-language broadcasters must contribute 30 per cent of revenues to Canadian programming, and the CRTC last year ordered streaming services to pay five per cent of their annual Canadian revenues to a fund devoted to producing Canadian content.

[–] Tiger666@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Another small mind thinker.

[–] kbal@fedia.io -4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If you meant to communicate something by that, I think you need more practice at this telecommunications thing.

[–] Tiger666@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 days ago

Lol