CRTC to Push Ahead on Streamer CanCon Despite Trade Talks

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) will still write Canadian content rules for streaming services even after those rules helped blow up trade talks with Washington, according to Global News.

A CRTC spokesperson said the regulator is moving forward to decide exactly how streamers have to make Canadian programming available and visible to audiences. Dates for those regulatory proceedings are still being finalized.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has said the U.S. pressed Ottawa to change its position on online discoverability, and that those demands would have limited how the country protects its culture, including the French language. That same fight already showed up in how the trade talks collapse hits Netflix and in Michael Geist’s case that Ottawa may help Washington kill Quebec’s streaming law.

The 2023 Online Streaming Act says streamers offered here should make Canadian programs, including French-language titles, easy to find. The CRTC is implementing that law, and in May it said it would not drop a single universal requirement on every platform right away, choosing instead to work with each streamer on tailored rules.

There are still no specific discoverability quotas in force. The May policy defined discoverability as content being available and visible even when someone is not looking for it, and it said Canadians should be able to find a full range of Canadian and Indigenous programming in French, English, and Indigenous languages, not just in Canada-only silos.

Foreign streamers generally opposed prescriptive obligations, arguing they already promote Canadian titles, and they asked that any rules be tailored to each platform, while Canadian Association of Broadcasters president Kevin Desjardins said foreign streamers competing here should face obligations that are fair compared with the Cancon quotas already on TV and radio, and Canadian Media Producers Association chair Kyle Irving said Ottawa should now reconsider the financial contribution measures it previously backed away from because those concessions only fed “the American greed for more.”

The Online Streaming Act also bars the CRTC from requiring a specific computer algorithm or source code. The same regulator is taking public comments through Monday, August 31 on the new Bell, Rogers and Telus phone switching fees, a separate file with a hard deadline.

The May framework is in the CRTC’s 2026-95 policy.