We should end Big Tech’s free ride

For Canadian storytelling, it’s now or never. And “it” is the passage of the Online Streaming Act, otherwise known as Bill C-11. Intended to modernize the Broadcasting Act, this legislation will require tech giants like Amazon, Disney and Netflix to pay their fair share — and, in so doing, help ensure Canadians preserve the ability to tell our own stories, on air and online.

To be clear, streaming has been a boon to consumers and storytellers alike. It has provided new opportunities for Canadians to have their stories told, and to reach new audiences at home and abroad. But it is almost impossible to translate those opportunities into sustainable Canadian businesses when the profits and the decision-making authority rest firmly and eternally in the hands of a few heavily concentrated Big Tech companies — powerful border-defying platforms that are also extremely resistant to rules or regulations of any sort from any government or body.

Unsurprisingly, that power is not being deployed to the full and fair benefit of our storytellers, nor to our country.

Imagine that you have a house guest who doesn’t bother to pay rent. Maybe at first you enjoyed their company; perhaps they sprang for the cost of what they took from the fridge and even occasionally bought you a meal or two. But when it came time to pay their share for important things like home maintenance and improvement, they wiped their face on your clean towels and said no thanks.

That’s effectively what these streaming platforms have been doing in Canada for the past 10 years.

They are crashing on our cultural couch, paying nothing toward the structures and systems that allow Canadian storytelling to survive and thrive. They pony up only when and how it suits their business models and public relations machines.

That’s what Bill C-11 seeks to correct. No more free rides. Instead, those who benefit from Canada’s cultural sector will be obliged to contribute to it.

But even then, we will need to do more. Even if we manage to pass the bill, vigilance will be required to ensure the contributions collected from foreign streamers flow to, and remain with, Canadian storytellers.

In this way, we don’t just protect our crucial cultural industries — we also reassert our sovereignty. Technically speaking, these giants are based in the United States. But they are fundamentally global in how they operate and how they elude accountability. Long-standing rules and regulations developed in countries all around the world — including our own — are rejected out of hand by these platforms as anachronistic and outmoded, disconnected from contemporary forces and technologies. In their view, nobody should be able to tell them differently.

For all these reasons, it’s urgent that we act now. If we don’t take this opportunity to establish fairness and sustainability as basic tenets of Bill C-11 and force a clear set of obligations on these tech giants, we may not get the chance again.

The federal government came forward once already with legislation on this front, only to encounter massive resistance. The new bill addresses many of the concerns raised during the last Parliament — but it still faces pushback from powerful interests and their allies.

So now it’s a question of will. In Europe and beyond, countries are creating new rules and guidelines to rein in these platforms and level the playing field.

Now it’s our turn to show that, as Canadians, we are willing to stand up for ourselves and for our country by changing the locks on those who think they can continue to crash on our couch. It’s our house, after all.