Report: Liberals to Gut Online Streaming Act

Courtesy: Andrew Meade

The federal government is reportedly planning to gut the Online Streaming Act by removing all funding requirements for American streamers. This is a devasting blow to Canadian news media as that funding was set to create $2 billion for our media ecosystem. The news comes after a letter from the Attorney General's office was made public by The Wire Report.

This decision comes after the CRTC was asked in June by Mark Carney's Liberals, to review their ruling which increased funding requirements for foreign streamers from 5% of revenue, to 15%. The requirement only applied to major streamers with over $25 million in annual revenue. Unifor President Lana Payne said this after the order to potentially eliminate the increase: “This latest move by the federal government represents a devastating blow to our cultural sovereignty and to our strong, diverse Canadian media ecosystem, including local news.”

Canadian Identity Minister Marc Miller said his government will provide $600 million in short-term relief funding for Canadian producers, which will be renewed on an annual basis. There is no word on whether contributions for Canadian streamers will change – they had been set to drop by 5%-%20 under the CRTC’s ruling. Miller had promised that the base contribution for foreign streamers would not be wiped out, saying, “this isn't an absolute removal of any responsibility to contribute to the sector, far from that.” Today’s news does not align with those comments.

MAP strongly disagrees with this reported decision, and we continue to call for foreign streamers to contribute to the system and infrastructure from which they so greatly benefit. Conceding this type of funding to the Trump administration has not proved worthwhile, as we've seen with the cancellation of the Digital Services Tax.