Federal government won’t clarify stance on possibility of future streamer payments for CanCon

详细摘要

Days after Mark Carney said it isn’t necessary to impose a tax on big tech companies, his office won’t clarify if that means financial contributions from streamers are off the table entirely.

OTTAWA — Days after Prime Minister Mark Carney said it isn’t necessary to impose a tax on big tech companies, his office won’t say if that means financial contributions from streamers are off the table entirely.

Carney made the comments at a press conference in Montreal Tuesday, in response to a question about a CRTC-mandated requirement for streamers to pay a percentage of their revenues toward Canadian content.

The Liberals said in June they wanted the regulator to back down on that contribution requirement and would instead provide $600 million in annual funding directly.

But the federal budget only allocated $600 million for this fiscal year, and a government spokesperson confirmed the amount could vary in future because the CRTC could still impose some level of financial contribution on streamers.

Spokespeople for the Prime Minister’s Office did not answer questions from The Canadian Press about where the government stands on imposing financial contributions on streamers in future years.

They also did not answer when asked which tax the prime minister was talking about. CRTC-mandated contributions are not a tax, though they have at times been colloquially but inaccurately referred to as a “Netflix tax.”

Last year, the Liberal government cancelled a digital services tax following opposition from U.S. President Donald Trump. The tax would have applied to companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, Uber and Airbnb, and was not related to funding for Canadian content.

The rules on contributions for streamers were imposed by the CRTC under the Online Streaming Act, which the U.S. has identified as a trade irritant.

Over the summer, Ottawa cited U.S. demands on the visibility of Canadian content on streaming services as one of the reasons it cut off trade talks with the United States.

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