“Elbows up, eh?”
June 7, 2026
Eight months is a long time in politics and we have come a long way since former Heritage minister Steven Guilbeault proclaimed that “culture is not on the table” in CUSMA trade talks.
Despite Prime Minister Mark Carney vetoing the core ruling of the CRTC’s application of the Online Streaming Act to Netflix and the Hollywood streamers last Wednesday, a wag might suggest Guilbeault has been vindicated. Culture never even got to the table.
If you have any lingering doubts about my view on all of this, you can go back and read my opinion column published last Friday in Cartt.ca. If on the other hand you would rather just soak your head in some sardonic humour, there’s always Mark Musselman’s satiric piece.
Carney may have made his political calculations shrewdly. His cave on streamer contributions to Canadian content and his embrace of the Conservative Party’s “no Netflix tax” anthem wasn’t much more than a one day story in English Canadian media. The Globe & Mail’s television critic Kelly Nestruck stood out as a dissenter.
In Québec media commentators were critical, but not in the hair-on-fire manner you might have expected. Perhaps everyone is waiting to see where the big fat $600 million in public subsidies, tabbed to replace streamer dollars, is going to land. Brilliant stuff sir, keeping your critics hungry like that.
Nobody in the national media, save one journalist, thought to ask the Prime Minister what transpired in his private meeting with Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos a week before handing him a multi million dollar windfall. If the Prime Minister was ever to attend Question Period, an MP might ask him.
Now perhaps there is reason for optimism, or at least less pessimism.
We know nothing about the $600 million. It could be good news.
Also, we haven’t seen the minister’s new Policy Direction to the CRTC that is supposed to guide the regulator’s reconsideration of its government-vetoed ruling.
The PMO’s lawyers will be hard at it, drafting the new Policy Direction so that it stays on the legal side of the line that separates “advice” from “command.” A PMO dictat to ban streamer cash contributions to Canadian media funds will be tricky. As will any bottom line demands on direct streamer investments in Canadian programming.
As well, we have to wait to see if the new Policy Direction quietly delves into other parts of the CRTC’s ruling that the government may or may not like.
Rethinks of copyright partnerships, priority treatment for English language dramas, and funding for “services of exceptional importance” are possible.
And of course, the biggest conundrum that seems to escape all notice is what to tell the CRTC to do with respect to the yawning gap between foreign streamer contributions to Canadian content and those made by Canadian broadcasters.
After all, the law that Parliament passed requires the regulatory load be spread “equitably” and the first CRTC ruling did that (fingers crossed behind the back) with a 15% (of revenues) CanCon spending quota for streamers and 25% for broadcasters.
You can expect Canadian broadcasters to tell the CRTC that they want the deal that Netflix got.
Well played, Mr.Prime Minister.
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I like to track below-the-radar stuff for you.
Here’s one: the British Competition and Markets Authority just ruled that Google must reveal to news publishers whether it’s ingesting their content into its AI models and give them a window into who is engaging with their content. According to Press Gazette, the CMA will require Google to:
“– provide publishers with effective controls over the use of their search content in generative AI
“– publish clear, comprehensible and user-friendly information explaining how publishers’ search content is used by Google in its generative AI
“– provide publishers with clear and detailed metrics on user engagement with their search content in search generative AI features
“– take reasonable steps to ensure that search content is attributed clearly and accurately in general search, and that end users have a clear means to access that search content.”
The CMA also says that it plans to force Google to let news publishers opt-out of AI ingestion of their content and —this is a big one— stop Google from forcing news publishers to de-index their linked snippets from appearing in Search as the condition of withholding their content from the maw of Google’s AI models.
Said the regulator, “Publishers will now have effective tools to prevent their content being used to power AI features in search, such as AI Overviews. This will put publishers, like news organisations, in a stronger position to negotiate content deals with Google.”
Keep in mind, the CMA’s move is a competition remedy to an anti-competitive practice by a single monopoly tech player. On another continent. By a public regulator that could be overruled by elected officials. Although as we know, that so rarely happens.
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This blog post is copyrighted by Howard Law, all rights reserved. 2026.
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