The damaging implications of Bill C-11 continue to make appearances after Netflix pulls its sponsorship of a development program.
It’s no secret that the Online News Act (formerly Bill C-18) has been a complete disaster. With the dropping of news links on Meta, the gutting of traffic for news sites, increased dependence on government bailout money, and the resulting erosion of trust in the media by Canadians, the fact that the Online News Act has blown up in the face of supporters is about as obvious as it gets. All of this was predictable, but those pushing that law in the first place routinely ignored the warnings by experts and the mountains of evidence that supported those accurate predictions.
The Online Streaming Act (Bill C-11) has equally been predicted to be a complete disaster. The problem is that a lot of the negative implications are delayed thanks to the CRTC currently working on a series of consultations before that dream wrecking machine is fully operational. Already, their consultation process, which the CRTC swore up and down that would be no bid deal while the bill was making its way through the Senate, has been delayed to the end of 2025. As it turns out, regulating the internet was no trivial task after all (freaking duh!). While the damaging implications of the Online Streaming Act is obvious, the repercussions are a bit more slow moving at this point.
Clear back in 2021, we published an article of what the impacts of Bill C-11 (then called Bill C-10) would be. In short, Canadian creators who are basically digital first would see their audience numbers fall through the floor. This as government certified “Cancon” (Canadian Content) is mandated to take priority over their content, thus creators will see their content get downranked and left unseen by most of their audience. That seems certain to happen, but we won’t see this affect until the Online Streaming Act comes into force.
What’s more, the CMF (Canada Media Fund) has basically ensured that an overwhelming majority of money extracted from Canadian creators won’t get redistributed back to those creators generating that wealth in the first place. On that front, if you are a Canadian digital first creator, you won’t see a penny from all these new fees as that money is going to go towards the broadcast of traditional media abominations like Family Feud Canada among other things.
Another impact in all of this is the fact that it forces the redirection of investment dollars away from streaming services and forcibly put into a pot for other companies to pillage. On that front, the damage has already occurred. Last year, Disney announced that they would be halting new investments in productions happening in Canada.
What’s more, the CRTC has incurred not one, not two, but three lawsuits over the Online Streaming Act.
Now, you might recall late last month about a report we published. In it, the CRTC basically finalized their demands that 5% of revenues be forked over to the CRTC from the platforms. This has resulted in speculation about how the platforms intend on reacting to this. We already know that, in response to the Digital Services Tax, Google said that it would be passing those costs onto consumers. So, as the speculation goes, it is likely that Google would do the same thing with the Online Streaming Act. This over top of smaller streaming services threatening to pull out of Canada altogether. On top of that, investment dollars going into Canadian productions could soon evaporate as well.
With respect to that last point, that appears to be happening already. Netflix has said that it is pulling its sponsorship’s of a variety of funding programs across the country. From the Globe and Mail:
The future of several professional development programs crucial to the health of the Canadian film and television industry are in jeopardy as Netflix Canada pulls sponsorship from a number of arts institutions in response to new investment measures laid out under the Online Streaming Act.
Various cultural organizations across the country learned last week that Netflix was pausing funding for a number of training and development initiatives. Since 2017, the year that the streaming giant established its Canadian production arm, Netflix has invested more than $25-million in such programs, helping further the careers of more than 1,200 Canadian writers, directors, producers and performers.
“This is extremely disappointing as Netflix was a significant and founding supporter of the Pacific Screenwriting Program, in line with their commitment to Canadian talent development,” said Camilla Tibbs, executive director of Vancouver’s PSP, whose flagship Scripted Series Lab has for the past six years launched the careers of emerging B.C. screenwriters, particularly diverse voices.
At Hot Docs, which is currently undergoing an organizational restructuring while facing a series of financial setbacks, organizers said that without Netflix’s support, they may have to discontinue three programs: Canadian Storytellers Project, CrossCurrents Doc Funds, and Incubator Labs, which have collectively supported hundreds of filmmakers’ careers.
And at the imagineNATIVE Institute, where Netflix has funded upward of 90 per cent of the organization’s year-round development programs, the streamer has indicated that any resources beyond 2025 are in doubt.
“I’ve been very grateful for their support, which since 2020 has been able to help more than 50 Indigenous professionals working in the screen media,” said Naomi Johnson, imagineNATIVE’s executive director. “All of us running not-for-profit arts organizations are contending with rising costs, so this now means more hustling in the private sector. And the pure volume of work in that kind of fundraising is exhausting.”
This is just the latest consequence of the Canadian governments actions. As a result, a number of these initiatives are either on the brink or are basically shutting their doors. Because of that, a lot of careers that might have started through these programs may never get off the ground. It doesn’t take much imagination to envision just how devastating that is for the Canadian creative sector.
As bad as all of this is, this just one of the many angles in which the Online Streaming Act is proving absolutely destructive for the Canadian creative sector. Already, news organizations are demanding a cut from the Online Streaming Act after they took heavy losses from the Online News Act. There is, of course, the threat of trade retaliation from the US which could place billions of tariffs on the Canadian economy. This over top of the many ways in which digital first creators, a number of whom own small and medium sized businesses, are going to get completely screwed both from a funding perspective and from an audience perspective.
Thanks to the platforms, Canadian creativity has never been more supported or visibly present. After years of Canadian creators finding their own ways of making it all work out, the Online Streaming Act is threatening to completely undo all of that. Some are taking the approach of acting like they were never Canadian with the hopes that an international audience can still be reached. This as a Canadian audience could soon be completely out of reach, locked away under heavy regulation. It has never been more clear that the Canadian government is fully in the business of picking winners and losers in this sector. For the Canadian government, their lobbyist pals and establishment is the winners, no matter what. Canadians, in general, who are building businesses and helping to grow the Canadian economy, have been chosen to be the losers. A truly tragic state of affairs, really.
(Via @MGeist)
