maaxx.ca

The global streaming giant has asked a Canadian court to halt its plan to charge a 5% fee to pay for local programming.

The Motion Picture Association-Canada (MPA-Canada), which represents companies including Netflix, Paramount and Disney, alleged in a court filing that the requirement “constitutes a discriminatory act that goes well beyond what Parliament intended.” It says it “exceeds” the authority of the CRTC regulator and ignores billions of dollars in annual spending in Canada.

Specifically, MPA-Canada alleges that global studios and streaming services spent more than C$6.7 billion to produce content in Canada for local and international audiences and invested more in content from Canadian production companies last year than the CBC or the Canada Media Fund and Telefilm combined. . .

“Our member streaming services do not produce local news and do not benefit from the significant legal privileges and protections that Canadian broadcasters enjoy in exchange for the responsibility of providing local news,” said Wendy Noss, President of MPA-Canada.

The CRTC had previously said the tax, part of controversial Bill C-11, would take effect in September, requiring streamers to invest 5% of their local revenues into a fund that would finance local news.

The regulator estimates the fund will bring about C$200 million to the local broadcasting system annually and previously said: “Funding will be directed to areas of greatest need in the Canadian broadcasting system, such as local news on radio and television, French-language content, Indigenous content, and content created by and for equality-deserving communities, official language minority communities, and Canadians of diverse backgrounds,” the CRTC said at the time.

The CRTC also said broadcasters will have “the flexibility to dedicate a portion of their contributions to directly support Canadian television content.” The regulator could not be reached before the closing time of today’s edition.

Streamers constantly question why they should pay for local programming or news and point out the spending they also make in local markets.

The same arguments are playing out in many countries around the world, but Canada has emerged as a hot spot and a potential target for coal mining if regulations prompt streaming companies to pull their investments.