Catching up on MediaPolicy – TIFF disinvites another documentary – Big Tech gears up for making trade war on Canada

August 14, 2025

The Toronto International Film Festival may impale itself on yet another disinvitation, this year it’s the documentary “The Road Between Us: the Ultimate Rescue.”

The documentary is directed by a Canadian, Barry Avrich and tells the dramatic story of retired Israeli general Noam Tibon driving his car straight into the Hamas killing fields on October 7, 2023 to save his family under siege by Hamas terrorists in their safe room in kibbutz Berri. CBS 60 Minutes did a television segment on this in 2023.

According to news reports, TIFF claims there are outstanding copyright liabilities that the documentary producers failed to clear regarding livestream video of the Hamas assault. TIFF also told the documentary’s producers that it was concerned about anti-Israeli protesters disrupting TIFF (though it now denies this was the reason for the disinvitation).

TIFF encountered the same controversy last year by cancelling Russians At War, a documentary focussing on Russian soldiers participating in the invasion of Ukraine. The Ontario provincial educational broadcaster TVO then followed suit and cancelled its own distribution of the documentary. 

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The National Post published a report suggesting US Congress is egging on the White House for trade war with Canada over Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act. The story was based on the Post‘s access to an unpublished letter sent to the White House from 18 of the 26 Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee.

Intermittent Congressional statements demanding trade action are a well established feature of the Big Tech/Hollywood campaigns to roll back Canadian media regulation of all kinds.

The Post story quotes Republican allegations that our CRTC is unfairly favouring Canadian broadcasters and discriminating against American and other foreign streamers.

I’m not going to dive deep into that complex issue here: it’s complex because the CRTC’s assessment of contributions to support Canadian content is always an apples and oranges exercise.

Differently situated Canadian and foreign media companies contribute in different ways either by paying in cash –to Canadian media funds that offer subsidies to creators of Canadian video and audio content– or in kind, by making available and promoting Canadian content on their own platforms.

It’s fair to say that the CRTC provided the Americans with a bullseye target by exempting Bell’s streaming platform Crave from the same cash contributions as the Californian streamers, but that’s a small part of the overall picture and Bell sponsors far more Canadian programming on Crave than Netflix, Disney+, Paramount+, AppleTV and Amazon Prime combined.

In any event, the CRTC is in the midst of assessing the cash and kind contributions of foreign streamers and so the Congressional objections are premature.

But clearly the Congressional report is an early volley in the coming trade confrontation with the US over the renewal of the CUSMA trade deal, including Canadian culture.

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Reuters has published a story based on a confidential cables from the US State Department instructing US diplomats in Europe to the rattle cages of national governments over European regulation of Big Tech.

The disgruntlement is both US tech opposition to EU’s measures taken against online harms and misinformation as well as the alleged stifling of the MAGA political narrative in mainstream media.

The MAGA-tech strategic alliance fits comfortably with trade confrontation in which the US claims to be the aggrieved party, perhaps a signal that the recent tariff armistice between the US and the EU is temporary.

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On the topic of Big Tech’s political action in foreign countries, I note that the US Chamber of Progress (ah, the branding!) is setting foot in Canada by hiring a Canadian policy director.

The Chamber styles itself as a liberal Democrat inspired coalition of Big Tech partners, such as Apple, Amazon and Google.

The tech titans already lobby the federal government and make representations to the CRTC both individually and through the Washington-based CICA and Digital Media Association. So presumably the Chamber of Progress is coming here to do something a little different. The organization has been accused in the past of “astroturfing” for corporate campaigns. Or perhaps the Chamber is seen as a better lobbying fit for a Carney government.

In any event, we already have an authentically Canadian campaign organization that does similar work in pushing back on regulation of the Internet —-Open Media—- with very little money from Big Tech. 

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Here are two recommendations, one joyful the other not.

Ezra Klein has an insightful podcast on “when is it genocide?” featuring legal expert Philippe Sands. Be prepared to invest a lot of time (almost two hours!) and at the end you may still feel that the arguments are incompletely litigated. But I think you will be better educated (I was) about the history of the UN Convention on Genocide, the legalities, and their application to Gaza.

The other is a repeat recommendation of my favourite show, Crave’s Empathie, thanks to the announcement that a second season of the funny-sad drama set in a Montreal mental health centre has been green lit. 

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This blog post is copyrighted by Howard Law, all rights reserved. 2025.