After the American studios criticized Canada for raising its cash call on large U.S. streamers, skeptical local creative guilds and unions have raised questions around the CRTC’s latest Online Streaming Act ruling.
Those are the same Canadian filmmakers supposed to benefit from the country’s TV czar slapping another 10 percent levy on foreign streaming platforms on top of an interim 5 percent obligatory expenditure on homegrown Canadian content production in controversial legislation often referred to as a “Netflix tax.”
The Writers Guild of Canada said the Canadian Radio-television and telecommunications decision was “a significant step forward” in the years-in-the-making OSA legislation, first made law in 2023 and now held up in the Federal Court of Appeals due to a legal challenge by foreign media players.
On May 21, the CRTC ordered American digital platforms to contribute 15 percent of their Canadian revenues to subsidize local indie film and TV production, while reducing spending obligations on local broadcasters. But local screenwriters took issue with the TV regulator ending a policy of putting a priority on Programs of National Interest (PNI), or homegrown dramas and documentaries, including kids and youth programming and animation, to receive subsidies from foreign streamers.
“Drama, kids’ shows, animation, and documentaries are fundamentally at-risk genres of Canadian programming. When we talk about the need to support Canadian content and Canadian voices, it is the vulnerability of these genres in particular that is at the root of the discussion,” WGC president Bruce Smith said in a statement.
The Directors Guild of Canada also cited the loss of key Canadian programming protections for putting the jobs of local directors and creative teams at risk.
“The market alone will not reliably protect Canadian storytelling without clear and measurable rules. This framework contains spending requirements, but very few direct obligations tied to original Canadian storytelling itself. Without those protections, there is a real risk that investment shifts away from original Canadian drama and documentaries and towards safer, lower-cost, or internationally optimized content that does little to sustain Canadian creative voices, key Canadian creators or long-term domestic production capacity,” Alistair Hepburn, national executive director of the DGC, said in a statement.
Beyond good intentions, show us the money was the call from ACTRA, the country’s actors union, as it reacted to the decision by the CRTC to dig deeper into the pockets of U.S. digital platforms doing business in Canada.
“While yesterday’s announcement contains encouraging language about supporting Canadian and Indigenous production, performers cannot build a future on aspirations alone. The test is whether these proclamations will lead to meaningful, enforceable investment in Canadian culture. ACTRA needs to see clear rules, accountability, and measurable outcomes, while also asking why Canadian broadcasters will pay less into investment while billion-dollar foreign streamers will only see a modest increase,” ACTRA national president Eleanor Noble said in another statement.
Even the Canadian Media Producers Association, representing indie film and TV producers, said it was reading the fine print in the CRTC decision before giving any thumbs up. “We are reviewing the decisions in detail, and will work to ensure that they enable Canadian independent producers to continue to make a significant contribution to the production of Canadian programs,” the CMPA said in a statement.
The Motion Pictures Association, representing major studios and streamers in the U.S., earlier slammed the CRTC decision for imposing “unprecedented, unnecessary, and discriminatory investment obligations” on U.S. companies and breaching Canada’s obligations under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), a trade arrangement currently being renegotiated between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico amid an ongoing tariff war.
That’s left the threat of a trade battle on top of the current legal challenge, which is holding back implementation of the OSA to underwrite the cost of homegrown content production in the streaming era.
