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Streaming Bill Regulating Netflix, Amazon And Co In Canada [Finally] Becomes Law
Felt like it's been a slow-motion battle happening for years right past the horizon.
Basically: major streamers content sites will be obliged to push more Canadian content like television broadcasters are. For internet companies the goal would be to provide them with an incentive to increase the visibility of "Canadian" (defined by the government) content.
I'm...ambivalent. On the one hand, I constantly attack Canada for having limited independent cultural generation or even political discourse. So I find it hard to be too critical at them for taking proactive steps to push Canadian content. The cultural exception is an old concept at this point.
On the other hand...I just...don't trust the Canadian governments' competence at actually pushing "Canadian" (which they'll define for us) content. It's possible that this'll lead to more "non-descriptly Canadian" shows, but also more Nickelback-style shows (one common explanation for why they're hated is CanCon requirements meant radio stations had to play some Canadian and they benefited disproportionately, with a corresponding backlash).
There's also the question of just how this'll affect Canadian content creators (especially individuals uploading in spaces like Youtube), who probably benefit from basically being seen as indistinguishable from Americans and don't necessarily want the government putting its finger on the scale of what content gets rewarded. It might lead to less good Canadian content, as creators who could probably do a "one for us, one for them" model might find that harder. Or just lead to the people being promoted being part of a government-sustained, low-stakes artistic ghetto that can't be allowed to fail or we might have to give up on this "cultural sovereignty" thing.
The only people who care about "cultural sovereignty" are the Eastern City people for what should be obvious reasons; the rest of their empire throwing in with the Americans is a real risk. Of course, the Eastern Cities are arguably even more [Blue] American than the rest of the country so it's not really going to help them any more than it did before, but they think it will and that's what matters.
American here. What are those obvious reasons? What empire?
Canada is basically what the US would look like if NYC, DC, and San Francisco had absolute control. The US doesn't have this problem because they intentionally structured their government to prevent a couple of states from dominating all the others; the Canadian system is by contrast specifically intended to encourage this (as are all polities that use the British model as a base). All executive power is downstream of whoever holds the legislature here as well, so even in a situation where one party can't get the rest of the country to agree with them that party still has an outsized amount of control.
All [relevant] votes in the legislature are on party line, so Canadian parties don't have to deal with the problem US parties have when their representatives sometimes decide to put their constituents first. You're not really even voting for a representative here, just a party.
So provided its largest cities can be set against the rest of the nation (and just like in the US, they are, with significant regularity), which is the usual electoral strategy, it's not meaningfully different than imperial domination over the rest of the nation (I get that some people will claim "but democracy therefore it's valid", forgetting that consent of the governed isn't equally geographically distributed).
The rest of the nation is not only culturally distinct from its largest cities, but their largest trading partners (by province) is the US by a wide margin. You can think of the provinces between the Pacific and Toronto as slightly bluer variants of the states to their immediate south- the ones east of that city are very different from their southern neighbors, though (different demographics, different levels of economic opportunity).
This is why the Eastern Cities need to keep that shared identity strong, or in other words, recognizing that Toronto and Ottawa have the right to rule the land and have your best interests at heart. The Canadian Content rules are their best attempt at this.
As an American, my vague impression was that the Canadian confederation of provinces had, if anything, even less centralization of power at the federal level than in the US. In particular, the absence of anything like the Interstate Commerce Clause means that Canadian provinces can and do get into trade wars with each other. And moreover my understanding was that the famed Canadian healthcare “system”—which is misunderstood by nearly all political commentators in the US—was in reality administered by each province separately, with the federal government’s role relegated to transferring money from one province to another.
Is my understanding correct? If so, could it be that Canadian federal politics sees no pushback against the Laurentian elite because (to steal a quote about academic politics) the stakes are so low?
Healthcare is under provincial jurisdiction. So what the federal government did was to set some standards which need to be met to get federal money which funds a large part, but not all, of the healthcare system. The systems themselves are run by each province, but they need to meet certain standards, such as covering certain things such that they're free and allowing visting residents of other provinces to use their own province's health insurance.
Of course, if the federal government can just tax everyone and only give the money back to those who do what it wants, I don't see how provincial jurisdiction is meaningful. The federal government can do what it wants if it has the political will. It's currently in the process of setting up a national subsidized daycare program, even though this is also an area of provincial jursidiction. It did something similar with the carbon tax, although it probably didn't have to.
I think a big part of the story is that Canada isn't really a natural country. It's just the leftover provinces of British North America that didn't join the United States. Geographically and culturally, it doesn't make much sense. Before they joined Canada, the different provinces didn't have much to do with each other. They had closer ties to the neighbouring parts of the U.S. Most provinces either have a history of trying to separate from Canada or it almost joined the U.S. instead.
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