CCPA study looks at Online Streaming Act’s impact on cultural sovereignty

The Online Streaming Act has been controversial over its short history, but a new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives suggests the legislation strongly affects cultural sovereignty. Introduced by Justin Trudeau’s government as Bill C-10, the legislation died on the Order Paper when the 2021 federal election was called. Reintroduced as Bill C-11, it passed through Parliament in 2022. On airwaves and algorithms, released last month, was written by York University Ph.D candidate Christine Cooling, and examines the history of cultural regulation in Canada and the debate surrounding C-11. Cooling found the proposed legislation, in both its incarnations, kept coming up in her university classes, and she also wrote her master’s thesis about C-11. “I thought this was very relevant and contentious in terms of the path that’s beginning to clear for internet regulation in Canada,” she tells The Wire Report. This is not a new debate, she said, as it has been at the core of discussion about Canadian culture for decades. “The notion of cultural sovereignty, central to Canadian cultural policy since the licensing of commercial radio in 1922, has not disappeared,” the study notes. “It has instead been rearticulated as digital cultural sovereignty: a twenty-first century expression of the longstanding desire to define and defend the nation’s cultural identity.” “These are the exact same debates that have been happening over and over again across the last century,” Cooling expands in an interview. “From the beginning of radio broadcasting regulation in Canada, it was always the question of ‘how do we maintain Canadian culture’ trying to balance that with ‘how do we ensure a viable industry’.” The report looks at the issue from above and below. “From above, policy-makers and industry leaders see cultural sovereignty as something to secure through top-down rules and regulations: funding requirements, regulatory oversight, and content mandates like those in the Online Streaming Act,” it states. “From below, sovereignty is about people’s everyday media experiences, including those online.” The author says the emphasis was intentional. “Everyday citizens, we don’t really go around talking about policies like these even though they impact how we interact with the media,” she explains. “So I was very interested in what people were saying.” Cooling was struck by the way the cultural sector has evolved. For decades, she says, radio and television did cultural work, while they have now been joined by transnational companies streaming content into our homes. She hopes her paper will lead Canadians to think about transparency, equity and what it means to meaningfully influence the nation’s cultural objectives. Meanwhile, these questions have only grown louder as the Act has become an irritant in trade negotiations with the United States. Canadian Identity Minister Marc Miller (Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Sœurs, Que.) recently pledged that culture will not be on the table, but he has refused to explicitly rule out sacrificing the Online Streaming Act. ppark@thewirereport.ca

CCPA study looks at Online Streaming Act’s impact on cultural sovereignty

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By Paul Park
|February 18, 2026

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CCPA study looks at Online Streaming Act’s impact on cultural sovereignty

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By Paul Park
|February 18, 2026