Creators threatened by the Online Streaming Act are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s making lobbyists nervous.
2023 was marked by a very dark day by Canadian creators. That year saw the passage of the Online Streaming Act. The Act would mandate the suppression of Canadian creators online in favour of mainstream media content on social media including YouTube. It was a complete disaster as the Canadian government chose high paid lobbyists over ordinary every day Canadians, risking the loss of access to multiple platforms entirely in the process.
While the Online Streaming Act is making its way through the CRTC process, one element of hope I was clinging on to is the fact that the passage of the Online Streaming Act was actually the easy part. What would follow is a much tougher battle to ensure it doesn’t get wiped out by inevitable court challenges and trade challenges from the US among other things. After all, the Online Streaming Act is a bad law and lawmakers should feel bad for passing it.
Fortunately, and unsurprisingly, those predictions all came true. The CRTC got hit with not one, not two, not three, but at least https://www.freezenet.ca/crtc-incurs-fourth-lawsuit-over-online-streaming-act-mpac/>four lawsuits at this point. Additionally, the US is challenging the Online Streaming Act is now being listed as a condition for the continuation of CUSMA/USMCA by the US. It’s considerable pressure to say the least.
Now, it’s no secret that the Online News Act has been absolutely wrecking the media over the last few years. There’s been shut downs and layoffs all across the board. This combined with massive cancellations for production contracts on top of it all. It’s almost impossible to over-estimate just how massive the trail of destruction that was left behind by the Online News Act. As such, the Online Streaming Act was set to basically unleash a similar level of destruction for Canadian creators as well.
Now, two years later, lobbyists are still trying to cling to the hope that all of their talking points will somehow come true… eventually. Maybe something will turn around and something will prove them right all along. After all, it’s what they convinced themselves at least, and if they said it, it must be true. In response to the massive amount of pressure from the US, lobbyists are pushing the messaging that rescinding the Online Streaming Act would lead to, I kid you not, layoffs. From the Globe and Mail:
Kevin Desjardins, president of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, said if the act is shelved as a result of American pressure, it would prove a “crushing blow” to Canada’s cultural sector.
Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne, who was among the parliamentarians to scrutinize the online streaming bill during its passage, said Canadian and Quebec culture is threatened by foreign streaming platforms.
“The Online Streaming Act is a crucial, still untested attempt to promote Canadian content – music, film – on those giant platforms,” she said in an e-mail. “Because it is at the heart of our culture, the Online Streaming Act should be exempted from the trade negotiations, as cultural products have been until now.”
Mr. Desjardins said on Thursday that with advertising migrating away from broadcasters to tech giants, and people choosing streaming platforms over cable subscriptions, the industry has been under great financial pressure. He said 13 local TV stations have closed this year, with more likely to follow if the legislation is rescinded.
He accused foreign streamers of “attempting to use the trade negotiations as a hammer to maintain the status quo and remain completely unregulated and able to continue to generate billions of dollars out of Canada without having to support the Canadian media system.”
Broadcast policy expert Monica Auer said scrapping the act would leave Canada’s broadcasting sector with “even more uncertainty.”
She cautioned that the failure of the CRTC to fully implement the act could weaken Canada’s position in any trade negotiations.
“C-11 was far from perfect, but the inordinate time that the CRTC has been taking to implement its changes has very much not helped. If C-11 been implemented by May, 2025, it would have been much harder to turn back the clock,” she said in an e-mail.
“But now? With no evidence that it has helped anyone, which would have enabled Canada to defend it, why wouldn’t the U.S. demand that it be on the table?”
It’s extremely hard to even read small snippets of comments from these clowns without laughing. First of all, the layoffs are already happening. They’ve been happening since both the Online News Act and Online Streaming Act has been implemented. Critics have long warned that this would happen and now it is happening. Welcome to reality.
Second, advertising has migrated away from traditional media platforms because fewer and fewer people are consuming traditional media content. The Online News Act and Online Streaming Act neither has changed that, nor will they ever. Advertisers are going to go to where the audiences are. Research has, for years, been pointing to a massive decline in trust for mainstream media. The simple truth is that people have grown tired of the low quality being pumped out by traditional media and have been seeking something half decent to check out. The online world provides that for a lot of people. as long as venture capital continues to suck the life out of the traditional news rooms, dumping money into those news rooms simply isn’t going to change that. Further, forcing people to watch garbage content from these outlets won’t make people like your content any more. There is a reason why people are going to social media to consume content – it’s better online. That’s saying a lot given the ongoing problems of AI slop these days on some platforms.
If anything, rescinding the Online Streaming Act would actually bring some level of certainty into the market. Canadian creators would no longer have to worry about a loss of their Canadian audience thanks to the algorithm manipulation mandated by the Online Streaming Act. If the mainstream media refuses to participate in the online world, that’s their own damned problem. At that point, they lose the right to whine and complain that no one wants to view their stuff any more as far as I’m concerned.
The lobbyists are inadvertently right about one thing. There is no evidence that the Online Streaming Act has helped anyone. I would argue that there is no evidence that it would’ve helped anyone outside of the largest corporations. After all, it was little more than a free money grab by the mainstream media companies in the first place. While the mainstream media plays up a big game about how that money would’ve gone towards production of more Canadian content, the realistic scenario is that the money would’ve just gone to the “feed the poor starving CEO” fund as well as a means to raise dividend payouts to shareholders afterwards. Bell certainly didn’t even bother to hide that fact, after all. The Online News Act didn’t even try to live up to the hype that it would lead to a golden era of journalism after it was passed. There’s no way that the Online Streaming Act, as pushed by the same lobbyists, would’ve been any different. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if the implementation of the Online Streaming Act would be followed up by even more layoffs as companies finally lose any remaining reason to pretend that it would lead to job growth and new production projects.
The lobbyist jack wagons have been wrong about everything about these two bills so far. Their continued push for them is even less convincing today than it was back then. If anything, it serves as evidence that it’s just easier to assume that the opposite of what they say is true. So far, the track record is pretty darn good there.
And here I am still trying figure out/remember why user made exemption was cut of OSA. Again LPC or CPC really easy bronie points to put it back in, and/or CRTC say CANCON algorithmic bullshitery. Still funny online Canadian content creators (and naturally Canadian users) arnt considered official CanCon.