Business
Will U.S. streaming companies play ball with the CRTC?: Peter Menzies
From the MacDonald Laurier Institute
By Peter Menzies
Domestic streamers have to live with the rules the CRTC comes up with, not so when it comes to global streamers
The fundamental weakness in Canada’s Online Streaming Act will be exposed for all to see on Nov. 20, when the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) comes face-to-face with American streaming companies.
For the first time, the regulator will be dealing with companies that, if they don’t like the rules and the financial burden the CRTC imposes, are free to leave the country.
To be clear, neither Netflix, Disney+ nor any other company has yet suggested they are prepared to quit Canada. There have been no threats to do anything similar to what Meta did and Google might – stop carrying news – in response to the Online News Act. But there is nothing that compels foreign companies from continuing here if CRTC decisions make it no longer sensible for them to do so.
That shapes the conversation in a way that the commission, which commences a three-week-long hearing Nov. 20 involving 127 intervenors, isn’t accustomed to. Throughout its history, the primary players in CRTC procedures have always been captives of “the system” – domestic companies that depend for their existence on a commission license or rely upon the regulator’s decisions for their sustenance. They may not like the rules the CRTC comes up with, but they have to live with them.
Not so when it comes to global streamers that, as it turns out, are global.
Netflix’s base here is robust – 6.7 million subscribers – but that is just 10 per cent of its U.S. audience and only 2.8 per cent of its global subscriber base. According to its submission to the CRTC, it has already invested $3.5-billion in film and TV production since launching here in 2010 – roughly equivalent to the Canada Media Fund’s spend over the same period. And, it claims, people are 1.8 times more likely to view a Canadian production on Netflix than on TV. Let that sink in.
Disney+ makes similar arguments. It has 4.4 million Canadian subscribers out of a global total of about 147 million (down significantly this year). It points out that it has invested $1.5-billion in Canada, which is one of its top four production markets. As it gently states in its submission to the CRTC: “We encourage the commission to adopt a modernized contribution framework and a revised, modern definition of a ‘Canadian program’ that provide sufficient incentives for global producers and foreign online undertakings to continue to bring large-scale productions to, and make capital investments in, Canada.”
Large domestic companies that have been forced by regulation to contribute to the production and airing of certified Canadian content, meanwhile, argue for their “burden” in that regard to be reduced and shifted onto the backs of foreign companies.
In its submission, BCE Inc., which has a current profit margin of 21.2 per cent, describes the broadcasting system as in crisis, accuses streamers of having “contributed precious little to the Canadian system” and calls for its contributions to be reduced from 30 per cent to 20 per cent of the media division’s revenue – a figure it believes should be applied to all offshore streamers with more than $50-million in Canadian revenue.
BCE Inc. goes on to argue that if the commission takes its advice and forces the streamers to pay 20 per cent of their revenue directly into Canadian content funds, an additional $457-million – growing to $678-million by 2026 – will pour into the pockets of ACTRA, the Writers Guild and others involved in the creation of certified Canadian TV and film content.
And that, right there, is where Netflix, with a profit margin of 13 per cent clears its throat. Politely but firmly, it says the CRTC appears to have already made up its mind that streamers should be paying into funds and “submits that this is not an appropriate starting point.”
The decade prior to the introduction of the Online Streaming Act was by far the most prosperous in the history of the Canadian film and television industry, including in terms of Canadian content production.
Most of that growth took place beyond the reach of the CRTC, which was in charge of an increasingly irrelevant system upon which many legacy companies had grown dependent. But instead of fostering what was working, the government chose to sustain what wasn’t.
So now, as with the Online News Act, it’s playing at a table where it no longer holds all the cards.
Peter Menzies is a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a former publisher of the Calgary Herald and a previous vice-chair of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
Business
Premiers fight to lower gas taxes as Trudeau hikes pump costs
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
By Jay Goldberg
Thirty-nine hundred dollars – that’s how much the typical two-car Ontario family is spending on gas taxes at the pump this year.
You read that right. That’s not the overall fuel bill. That’s just taxes.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau keeps increasing your gas bill, while Premier Doug Ford is lowering it.
Ford’s latest gas tax cut extension is music to taxpayers’ ears. Ford’s 6.4 cent per litre gas tax cut, temporarily introduced in July 2022, is here to stay until at least next June.
Because of the cut, a two-car family has saved more than $1,000 so far. And that’s welcome news for Ontario taxpayers, because Trudeau is planning yet another carbon tax hike next April.
Trudeau has raised the overall tax burden at the pumps every April for the past five years. Next spring, he plans to raise gas taxes by another three cents per litre, bringing the overall gas tax burden for Ontarians to almost 60 cents per litre.
While Trudeau keeps hiking costs for taxpayers at the pumps, premiers of all stripes have been stepping up to the plate to blunt the impact of his punitive carbon tax.
Obviously, Ford has stepped up to the plate and has lowered gas taxes. But he’s not alone.
In Manitoba, NDP Premier Wab Kinew fully suspended the province’s 14 cent per litre gas tax for a year. And in Newfoundland, Liberal Premier Andrew Furey cut the gas tax by 8.05 cents per litre for nearly two-and-a-half years.
It’s a tale of two approaches: the Trudeau government keeps making life more expensive at the pumps, while premiers of all stripes are fighting to get costs down.
Families still have to get to work, get the kids to school and make it to hockey practice. And they can’t afford increasingly high gas taxes. Common sense premiers seem to get it, while Ottawa has its head in the clouds.
When Ford announced his gas tax cut extension, he took aim at the Liberal carbon tax mandated by the Trudeau government in Ottawa.
Ford noted the carbon tax is set to rise to 20.9 cents per litre next April, “bumping up the cost of everything once again and it’s absolutely ridiculous.”
“Our government will always fight against it,” Ford said.
But there’s some good news for taxpayers: reprieve may be on the horizon.
Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s promises to axe the carbon tax as soon as he takes office.
With a federal election scheduled for next fall, the federal carbon tax’s days may very well be numbered.
Scrapping the carbon tax would make a huge difference in the lives of everyday Canadians.
Right now, the carbon tax costs 17.6 cents per litre. For a family filling up two cars once a week, that’s nearly $24 a week in carbon taxes at the pump.
Scrapping the carbon tax could save families more than $1,200 a year at the pumps. Plus, there would be savings on the cost of home heating, food, and virtually everything else.
While the Trudeau government likes to argue that the carbon tax rebates make up for all these additional costs, the Parliamentary Budget Officer says it’s not so.
The PBO has shown that the typical Ontario family will lose nearly $400 this year due to the carbon tax, even after the rebates.
That’s why premiers like Ford, Kinew and Furey have stepped up to the plate.
Canadians pay far too much at the pumps in taxes. While Trudeau hikes the carbon tax year after year, provincial leaders like Ford are keeping costs down and delivering meaningful relief for struggling families.
Agriculture
Sweeping ‘pandemic prevention’ bill would give Trudeau government ability to regulate meat production
From LifeSiteNews
Bill C-293, ‘An Act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness,’ gives sweeping powers to the federal government in the event of a crisis, including the ability to regulate meat production.
The Trudeau Liberals’ “pandemic prevention and preparedness” bill is set to become law despite concerns raised by Conservative senators that the sweeping powers it gives government, particularly over agriculture, have many concerned.
Bill C-293, or “An Act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness,” is soon to pass its second reading in the Senate, which all but guarantees it will become law. Last Tuesday in the Senate, Conservative senators’ calls for caution on the bill seemed to fall on deaf ears.
“Being from Saskatchewan I have heard from many farmers who are very concerned about this bill. Now we hear quite a short second reading speech that doesn’t really address some of those major concerns they have about the promotion of alternative proteins and about the phase-out, as Senator Plett was saying, of some of their very livelihoods,” said Conservative Senator Denise Batters during debate of the bill.
Batters asked one of the bill’s proponents, Senator Marie-Françoise Mégie, how they will “alleviate those concerns for them other than telling them that they can come to committee, perhaps — if the committee invites them — and have their say there so that they don’t have to worry about their livelihoods being threatened?”
In response, Mégie replied, “We have to invite the right witnesses and those who will speak about their industry, what they are doing and their concerns. Then we can find solutions with them, and we will do a thorough analysis of the issue. This was done intentionally, and I can provide all these details later. If I shared these details now, I would have to propose solutions myself and I do not have those solutions. I purposely did not present them.”
Bill C-293 was introduced to the House of Commons in the summer of 2022 by Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith. The House later passed the bill in June of 2024 with support from the Liberals and NDP (New Democratic Party), with the Conservatives and Bloc Quebecois opposing it.
Bill C-293 would amend the Department of Health Act to allow the minister of health to appoint a “National pandemic prevention and preparedness coordinator from among the officials of the Public Health Agency of Canada to coordinate the activities under the Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Act.”
It would also, as reported by LifeSiteNews, allow the government to mandate industry help it in procuring products relevant to “pandemic preparedness, including vaccines, testing equipment and personal protective equipment, and the measures that the Minister of Industry intends to take to address any supply chain gaps identified.”
A close look at this bill shows that, if it becomes law, it would allow the government via officials of the Public Health Agency of Canada, after consulting the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and of Industry and provincial governments, to “regulate commercial activities that can contribute to pandemic risk, including industrial animal agriculture.”
Text from the bill also states that the government would be able to “promote commercial activities that can help reduce pandemic risk,” which includes the “production of alternative proteins, and phase out commercial activities that disproportionately contribute to pandemic risk, including activities that involve high-risk species.”
The bill has been blasted by the Alberta government, who warned that it could “mandate the consumption of vegetable proteins by Canadians” as well as allow the “the federal government to tell Canadians what they can eat.”
As reported by LifeSiteNews, the Trudeau government has funded companies that produce food made from bugs. The World Economic Forum, a globalist group with links to the Trudeau government, has as part of its Great Reset agenda the promotion of “alternative” proteins such as insects to replace or minimize the consumption of beef, pork, and other meats that they say have high “carbon” footprints.
Trudeau’s current environmental goals are in lockstep with the United Nations’ “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” and include phasing out coal-fired power plants, reducing fertilizer usage, and curbing natural gas use over the coming decades, as well as curbing red meat and dairy consumption.
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