This essay is part of the Prosperity’s Path series. In a time of geopolitical instability and a shifting world order, the challenges facing Canada's economy have only gotten more visible, numerous and intense. This series examines the path forward.
When I visited the Vancouver office of OUTtv, an LGBTQ+ specialty network, in 2020, I found it across the street from a flooring company with a big, serious sign reading “BC Hardwood.” It was an unintentional reminder of the network’s less glamorous channel.
“HARDtv was a porn service,” said Brad Danks, OUTtv’s chief executive. “I couldn’t wait to get rid of it.”
Porn had been a bit of a problem. HARDtv was formed in 2005 after OUTtv, then called PrideVision, spun off its porn content in part to placate cable companies. But the main, porn-less channel still suffered in visibility, grouped with adult channels nonetheless. That exposed the real problem, that content must bow to distribution. OUTtv fought Shaw (now part of Rogers Communications Inc.) all the way to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
After Mr. Danks, an entertainment lawyer, came to OUTtv, along with selling off HARDtv in 2010 and pursuing more quality content, he also moved to diversify the network’s distribution. OUTtv started doing deals with YouTube, and selling content on iTunes, Google Play and Amazon Prime. In 2016, the network launched its own streaming service, OUTtvGo, though the channel is also carried on platforms such as AppleTV, Amazon and Roku.
Brad Danks joined OUTtv in 2006, working to grow the network's quality offerings and diversifying distribution in Canada. He became CEO in 2016, the same year OUTtv launched its streaming service.Rafal Gerszak/The Globe and Mail
By embracing Silicon Valley, OUTtv had turned from one master to another.
In a 2019 submission to a federal panel on updating Canada’s broadcast regulations, Mr. Danks said “a very large technology company” quietly and unjustifiably removed money-making ads from OUTtv’s content, and another platform apparently hid OUTtv’s titles because the network did not sign up for certain programs. This time there was no regulator to which to complain.
OUTtv’s concerns are part of a broader unease about these technology giants – not just because of their vast power over content producers, but also because of how they influence the nation’s cultural fabric. When Mr. Danks and I first spoke in 2020, the Liberal government was preparing Bill C-10 – the predecessor to the Online Streaming Act – to bring the online platforms under CRTC jurisdiction.
The long journey of the streaming act culminated late last week, when the CRTC formalized new rules that force online streaming companies to promote Canadian content and put up more money to support such programming.
The new rules will no doubt please the creative industry. But now the world has changed.
In January of 2025, a string of technology executives kissed the ring at U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration – the sum and symbol of a new era. Out went Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan, the antitrust czar who relentlessly went after tech giants. Meta Platforms Inc. unbanned Mr. Trump, willingly paid US$25-million to settle a lawsuit over the original banning and then swiftly lobbied to quash an antitrust trial. The U.S. government and its tech giants became one.
Tech executives including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, CEO of Google Sundar Pichai, and Elon Musk of X, SpaceX and Tesla, attend Donald Trump's Presidential inauguration in January, 2025.SHAWN THEW/Reuters
Since taking office, Mr. Trump has threatened the European Union with a tariff investigation after continental regulators hit Google with a US$3.45-billion fine. He said he was “terminating all discussions on trade” because of Canada’s digital services tax, which Ottawa swiftly walked back. A bill has been introduced in Congress that would probe whether the Online Streaming Act discriminates against American companies in violation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, known variously as USMCA or CUSMA.
With the CRTC’s new rules, another big crosshair has been painted on Canada.
Last week the CRTC formalized new rules that force online streaming companies to promote Canadian content and put up more money supporting such programming.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
In a way, there is a strange duality at play. The CRTC’s new rules do not make defending our economic sovereignty any easier. Yet those new rules are aimed at preserving a different sort of sovereignty.
American content dominates in Canada, just as it does all over the world. The Canadian-made Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie earned $350,000 domestically over the Family Day long weekend this year and that is considered a record. For comparison, in Cineplex theatres alone, Barbie and Oppenheimer collectively earned more than $19-million in their opening weekend.
This is in part because of the sheer size of Hollywood’s war chest. An average Canadian movie has a budget of $3.5-million. An average Tinseltown production, US$65-million. Then, ironically, it is often cheaper for Canadian networks to buy the rights to those same American blockbusters than to fund an original production. And it’s not just movies. Canadian bestseller lists are so flush with American books that the top title in the domestic section sometimes only clinches last on the main rankings.
Such a trend was perceived as early as 1951 by the Massey Commission, appointed to investigate the state of the arts. Its report read: “Canadian achievement in every field depends mainly on the quality of the Canadian mind and spirit. This quality is determined by what Canadians think and think about; by the books they read, the pictures they see and the programmes they hear.”
In 2020, a journalist investigated how Amazon’s Alexa smart speaker curates the news it puts out, questioning if it may unduly influence minds. Now, “the opinions of digital technology shape us and our world,” she wrote in the Financial Times.
The Massey Commission precipitated a wide range of federal support programs and regulatory reforms, such as the establishment of the CRTC and the Canada Media Fund. Broadcasters have to set aside a certain portion of airtime to Canadian content and also certain portion of revenue to pay in to the CMF.
Then the rise of streaming changed everything.
In Canada, for both 2018 and 2019, revenue for streaming services grew by 90 per cent, while that of traditional broadcasters fell 1.8 per cent. In 2020, a report warned, the number of Canadians using streaming services was set to outnumber traditional television subscribers for the first time. As traditional broadcasters make less money, the amount they put into Canadian content also goes down.
A production team works on the set of a film shoot in Almonte, Ont., in 2024. An average Canadian movie has a budget of $3.5-million, whereas an average Hollywood production has US$65-million.DAVE CHAN/Getty Images
Compounding on that is the COVID-19 pandemic, which both stalled productions and caused more viewers to flock to online platforms. “We all know that the world has changed,” a senior official from Canadian Heritage said at a background briefing in 2020. The official added that the heritage minister at the time was “very seized” with urgency.
In effect, the current situation is a clash between two important national priorities. In pushing for a more distinctively Canadian media landscape – a laudable, necessary goal – Ottawa has further provoked a newly hostile United States, which holds in its grip this country’s survival and prosperity.
And it’s anybody’s guess how fruitful those Canadian-content efforts would even be.
These online streamers are already investing in Canadian content. One might question whether they moved because the whip was looming, but all the same, they invest. Netflix in 2017 promised $500-million over five years. In 2020, Amazon’s Audible audiobook platform announced original podcasts on Indigenous issues and Canadian history. When users unsubscribe from Audible, among its prompts to the question of why is, “There isn’t enough Canadian literature,” almost egging the listener to tell the service to offer more.
It’s not as much as what the CRTC is asking for. But it could be even less.
Among the chief critics of the CRTC’s content mandates is Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa who calls the longstanding cries of CanCon crisis “bogus.” Mr. Geist was prescient when he spoke to me in 2020, when the government introduced the Online Streaming Act. The meandering road to Thursday’s CRTC rules – the original Bill C-10 had died without being passed when a federal election was called – reflects what Mr. Geist had warned of, a potentially never-ending battle to implement what the government wants.
The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which was signed by U.S. President Donald Trump, former Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, came into force in 2020. It is up for a mandatory six-year review, in which the three nations must decide whether or not to extend the trade pact for another 16 years.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
On his blog at the time, Mr. Geist wrote about the consultations, hearings, legal challenges and appeals to come – an entire process that could start anew if the new rules are struck down by the courts. “The uncertainty that it sparks in the sector is going to be problematic,” Mr. Geist said. In his view, the streaming platforms may just scale back investment and avoid Canada until they get clarity.
Meanwhile, the July 1 deadline for USMCA talks looms. In the lead up, Canada has repeatedly backed down in the face of United States pressure tactics. Prime Minister Mark Carney watered down his predecessor Mr. Trudeau’s retaliatory tariffs, in addition to walking back the digital services tax. Ontario Premier Doug Ford rescinded his threat of cutting power exports. He dropped his ad that angered Mr. Trump. American booze is back on Alberta’s shelves. Will the CRTC’s new rules be added to the list?
When OUTtv’s Mr. Danks wrote to the government review panel in 2019, the world was simpler and so were his requests. But he could easily be talking about the current moment: “We are here to tell you that we are very scared about the future.”
This essay is part of the Prosperity’s Path series. In a time of geopolitical instability and a shifting world order, the challenges facing Canada’s economy have only gotten more visible, numerous and intense. This series examines the path forward.