Ottawa to scrap base contribution requirement for large U.S. streamers and replace it with government funding

Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture and Minister responsible for Official Languages Marc Miller at the foyer of the House of Commons at the West Block on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday, June 16, 2026. Photo by HYUNGCHEOL PARK /Postmedia

Article content

OTTAWA — The Liberal government is planning to direct its broadcasting and telecommunications regulator to “eliminate” the five per cent base contribution requirements for large U.S. streamers that has been tied up in court.

Article content

Article content

Article content

Article content

“We are instructed to inform the Court that the Government’s intention is to eliminate the base contribution requirement on streaming services and to provide government funding to replace those contributions,” wrote Michael H. Morris, senior general counsel for the attorney general of Canada, in a letter dated July 17.

Article content

Article content

Morris adds that he expects the directive to be published for consultation in the Canada Gazette in the coming weeks and will provide the court with any developments that may impact the status of the ongoing litigation about the Online Streaming Act.

Article content

Canadian Identity and Culture Minister Marc Miller’s spokesperson confirmed the news, adding that the directive to eliminate base contribution requirements would be for those that are “outside the audiovisual sector to the broader cultural ecosystems.”

Article content

“At the same time, platforms will still be required to reinvest a percentage of their revenues in Canadian and Indigenous content,” press secretary Hermine Landry said.

Article content

Miller’s director of communications Alisson Lévesque explained that while the five per cent base contribution will indeed be eliminated, the Canadian programming expenditure (CPE) requirements — aimed at supporting the production of Canadian and Indigenous content — will still apply to online streaming services.

Article content

Article content

It is however unclear how the CPE contributions will be affected by the elimination of the five per cent base requirement or if the legal challenge is still moving ahead.

Article content

For Tania Kontoyanni, president of l’Union des artistes which represents over 13,000 members of the cultural sector in Quebec, the elimination of a base contribution from large streamers to fund Canadian content is simply “catastrophic.”

Article content

“I’m saying this without exaggeration: this is the worst news of the year,” she said.

Article content

Kontoyanni said she is “extremely discouraged” that the federal government is coming to this conclusion after years of effort to support the Canadian cultural sector. She is also not reassured by the government’s intentions which, in her view, signal that large streamers could fund Canadian content at their discretion.

Article content

“What we’re realizing today is that it is once again taxpayers who will have to pay for this — and those who make billions in profits won’t,” she said.

Article content

Hélène Messier, Francophone Co-Chair of the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, said the government will have to permanently guarantee the funding that the cultural sector had every reason to expect under the base contribution requirement, which her organization estimates at no less than $200 million annually.