Should Ottawa treat streamers more like broadcasters? Experts, parliamentarians think so

In the whirlwind of discussions about how much foreign streamers should be required to contribute to Canadian content, Concordia University’s Fenwick McKelvey said other important discussions have been forgotten. Online streamers are not unique in being asked to contribute to Canadian content creation. Traditional broadcasting distribution undertakings (BDUs) also have to shell out for a revenue-based contribution regime. But cable companies are also bound by other requirements, such as registering with Canada’s telecommunications regulator and offering an entry-level package that includes all the ‘must carry’ channels (also known as 9.1(1)(h) services) for no more than $25 a month. McKelvey, an associate professor in communication studies, thinks there needs to be more of a focus on requirements for streamers aside from the highly-debated contribution rates. He is most concerned with the issue of discoverability, and believes the Online Streaming Act gives the CRTC the toolkit it needs to regulate content promotion and accessibility. McKelvey told The Wire Report the CRTC should investigate whether there is undue preference in the way streamers promote their own content. He suggests the commission has hinted at the idea that a streamer, like Netflix Inc., promoting its own productions is different from simply being a cable provider hosting content, and he said there are open questions about how neutral these platforms are. “That’s a bit mute now because we’ve really just allowed ourselves to assume that Netflix has Netflix content and we just live in this hellscape of having to use these different streaming channels to get access to certain content,” he said. McKelvey said if the CRTC started looking at regulating the market power of streamers it would be moving in an “important direction.” Meanwhile, he continued, the CRTC also needs to reassert public policy goals in contrast to the “notoriously opaque” personalization trend. He questions what choices are really behind the content flagged under the “recommended for you” banner. “I’m a little sceptical of saying that you need to play the Tragically Hip every time you load up Spotify,” he said, adding there shouldn’t be hard and fast rules forcing certain content down the eyes and ears of users. However, he does think what’s going on behind the scenes of platform personalization is “sketchy” and streamers shouldn’t be hiding certain content and making it inaccessible. “It really gets into this moment where people are like, ‘Don’t tramp on my liberties or tell me what to watch,’” he said. “But there really is an important point at trying to think about the way that platforms are working, as access to content is really influential and they might have obligations for civil literacy, public participation, common news, and those should be more on the table.” Carleton University journalism and communications professor Dwayne Winseck echoes McKelvey’s concern about undue preference when it comes to how streamers approach discoverability. “There is no doubt Canadians have more media choices to pick from, but we also have entered a new phase of consolidation where adjacent and overlapping monopolies, oligopolies and limited competition have generated a clash of titans that constrains the boundaries of competition and choice,” Winseck wrote in a 2025 report on the state of the media industry in Canada. Winseck told The Wire Report he hopes to see fair treatment of services that are distributed by streamers addressed in the CRTC’s decision from the market dynamics and sustainability proceeding. The commission has issued its first decision following the proceeding, but it’s unclear whether another decision will address undue preference and fair carriage. Mandatory carriage Cable companies are not just required to carry 9.1(1)(h) services, such as The Weather Network and CBC News Network, but they also must allocate each service a mandated monthly per-subscriber wholesale rate. Winseck questions whether streamers should be required to do the same. He thinks it should at least be considered, but acknowledges it doesn’t make sense to impose on all streamers. Instead, Winseck said, it should apply to streamers that aggregate channels and resemble traditional cable. He suggests platforms that “meet a minimum size and…are involved in aggregation and distribution of broadcast programming” should face mandatory carriage requirements. Kevin Desjardins, president of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, agrees that channel aggregating services should be carrying both 9.1(1)(h) services and Canadian channels. He argues the Online Streaming Act needs to be used to create balance and fairness in the system. “Whatever the solution that we come to, it needs to be equitable between the Canadian and the foreign players,” Desjardins said in an interview with The Wire Report. “You can’t have a higher burden on Canadian broadcasters and then expect them to be able to compete with global giants in the same . . . media market where we’re all competing for the same viewers and subscribers and advertisers.” Desjardins argues online streamers are very similar to BDUs because they have a direct relationship with the subscriber. In many cases, he said, streamers have convinced their users to drop their cable subscriptions entirely, meaning they should be bound by media support requirements the same way BDUs are. “That’s part of the reason why we’ve been insistent on the fact that we believe that streamers should be helping to support news,” he said. “Their argument has been that they don’t do news, so they shouldn’t have to support it, and our argument would be that the fact that they don’t do news is part of the reason why they should have to support news in another way, because they are deriving a benefit from being present in the Canadian media economy.” “These questions to the heart of Canadian culture and identity,” Senator Andrew Cardozo said in a statement. “As foreign streamers eat into the Canadian distribution system, we have to be cognizant that they are willfully eating into our culture and identity.” “I don’t know what the solution is when we are faced with a very tough American industry and an administration with clear and tough goals, merciless in its quest for dominance, but we need to start with flagging that this is about who we are, and this is what we are fighting for.” McKelvey said there’s no easy answer, and while mandatory carriage worked to support 9.1(1)(h) services in the cable era, he’s not sure how to solve the problem for a contemporary streaming system. Cable Public Affairs Channel (CPAC), which broadcasts parliamentary proceedings, is one of the designated 9.1(1)(h) services. Green Party Leader Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, B.C.) said streaming services should be required to either carry CPAC, or broadcast proceedings themselves. “Canadians’ access to procedures of Parliament and parliamentary committees is an important unfiltered window for Canadians to see their and our parliamentary democracy in action,” she told The Wire Report. “And streaming services should also be providing that.” Taking a more nuanced approach Winseck also argues streamers should have mandatory reporting requirements to the CRTC, similar to broadcasters and telcos. “Broadcasters in Canada have had to disclose basic information to the CRTC since 1968, telecommunications companies since 1906,” he told The Wire Report. “With a century-long track record like that, I think it only makes sense that we apply some basic information disclosure obligations to streamers as well.” While the majority of discussions are caught up in what streamers should or shouldn’t be paying under the Online Streaming Act, McKelvey said the contributions and other requirements don’t have to go hand–in-hand. Instead of being so rigid about which platforms count under the Broadcasting Act, if the CRTC picks the discoverability lens back up, McKelvey thinks it would provide the regulator with more agility. “There could be some more nuance here where it’s like, okay we don’t expect any contributions, but for this type of service we do expect some accountability, some oversight,” he said. However, between the feds pushing back on the CRTC decision to increase the base contribution rates for streamers, the tabling of the Safe Social Media Act, and the updated commercial privacy framework, McKelvey feels the future of the CRTC under Prime Minister Mark Carney’s (Nepean, Ont.) government is unclear. The Safe Social Media Act and new privacy law would establish a shared regulator, appointed by cabinet, and would cut the commercial privacy aspect from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner’s (OPC) mandate. “The CRTC has been basically kneecapped here, and the federal government has said as loud as I think humanly possible, that it doesn't really like independent regulators like the CRTC and the OPC, and it wants to rebuild them in ways that they can politically control better,” McKelvey said. “It’s hard to see what the mandate of the CRTC is like now, given the loud part’s been pretty well signalled by the government.” mcollins@thewirereport.ca

Should Ottawa treat streamers more like broadcasters? Experts, parliamentarians think so

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By Maria Collins
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