Juno News - Trudeau wants to mandate Canadian content on Netflix

00:00:00.000 the federal government is coming for your Netflix catalog one of the details buried

00:00:10.920 in Justin Trudeau's mandate letter to the new Minister of Canadian Heritage Stephen

00:00:15.720 Gilbo is a section that will impact the catalogs potentially of streaming services like Netflix

00:00:22.140 Amazon Prime and even the new Disney service this is what Justin Trudeau said to the minister work

00:00:28.320 with the Minister of innovation science and industry to introduce legislation by the end

00:00:33.540 of 2020 that will take appropriate measures to ensure that all content providers including

00:00:40.260 internet giants offer meaningful levels of Canadian content in their catalogs contribute

00:00:45.720 to the creation of Canadian content in both official languages promote this content and

00:00:50.700 make it easily accessible on their platforms the legislation should also consider additional

00:00:56.760 cultural and linguistic communities so what the government is saying here is that within the

00:01:01.980 next year there must be legislation that forces Netflix not only to produce and showcase Canadian

00:01:07.380 content but to do it in a way that makes it very prominent so when you log in and it gives you that

00:01:13.140 list at the top of recommended movies well as one friend of mine pointed out it might not be that far

00:01:18.660 off that there has to be a bar pretty high up that says Canadian movies or Canadian TV shows now Canadian

00:01:25.980 content laws are already rampant in the television and traditional broadcast radio sectors the reason

00:01:33.060 those Canadian content laws exist is because there was a time when these companies found it more cost

00:01:38.760 effective just to buy American shows than to produce Canadian programs now despite the fact that there is

00:01:45.180 still a lot of great American programming there's also good Canadian programming now this idea that you need to

00:01:51.480 force companies to showcase it is not really all that appropriate in 2019 or 2020 but the problem that

00:02:00.120 we have here is that Canadians also can access better programming if they don't want whatever a service is

00:02:06.600 offering them the second you say that something has to be a Canadian show you're putting another priority

00:02:12.700 above quality why couldn't it just be a good show that happens to be Canadian for example through Netflix I've managed to find my

00:02:21.360 way into watching Spanish shows German shows other things that I may prefer to whatever else is on that

00:02:28.860 the Canadian government wants me to see the reason that streaming services exist and have become so

00:02:34.740 popular is because people are wanting to circumvent the traditional stranglehold that broadcast

00:02:41.520 regulators and broadcasters have had on what you can view streaming services let you choose what you want to watch so for the

00:02:49.800 government to throttle that in some way is just plain wrong now some of you may be thinking well

00:02:55.500 hang on the government saying you have to do more Canadian content there's nothing about taking away

00:03:00.600 other content well not so fast University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist who specializes in

00:03:07.320 internet law said that Netflix or other similar companies may be forced with a couple of options depending

00:03:14.160 on what percentage of overall content the Canadian government designates must be Canadian he said

00:03:20.700 that if the requirement is that shows have to have three percent Canadian content then it doesn't really

00:03:25.860 matter the Giants will be able to do it but if the number is 30 companies will be forced to either

00:03:31.920 shrink their catalogs or boost the Canadian content by making a lot of bad television and this is a very

00:03:39.060 significant challenge right now because these Giants exist because they give people choice government is

00:03:45.600 now trying to manipulate that which defeats the purpose of why they're so successful for True North I'm

00:03:52.200 Andrew Lutton

Juno News - December 27, 2019