The Star’s view Creative Canada: Deal good one for Netflix,

The deal with Netflix that Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly trotted out on Thursday as the centrepiece of her “Creative Canada” policy may turn out well for those who want to watch more Canadian movies and TV shows, and for those who want to produce them.

Just how good it is will depend on how the half-billion dollars Netflix promises to spend on producing programs in Canada over the next five years is spent, and what is created as a result.

But before any of that happens one thing is already clear: it’s an excellent deal for Netflix itself.

For one thing, it removes any possibility that Ottawa might slap a tax on the giant streaming service to help fund Canadian content. Unwisely, the government had already taken that proposal off the table, reducing its leverage with Netflix. But content producers, rival broadcasters and even some Liberal MPs were still pushing for a levy.

In return, Netflix has pledged to spend at least $500 million over five years on original productions in Canada. It will also open a “television production presence” in this country, its first outside the United States.

That may well be the best deal Ottawa could get from a company that right now has almost no physical presence in Canada. And half a billion, even these days, is nothing to sneeze at. But the reality is that there’s a lot less here than meets the eye.

To begin with, the deal does not “level the playing field” between Netflix and traditional Canadian broadcasters, which are struggling with falling revenues and competition from streaming services.

As a condition of renewing their licenses this year from the CRTC, the broadcasters had to agree to spend 30 per cent of their revenues on original Canadian content. Netflix won’t say how much revenue it collects in Canada. But in June, an independent consultant estimated the service has at least 5.2 million subscribers in Canada and, at roughly $10 per month per subscriber, that quickly adds up to an awful lot of money.

The $100 million a year it has pledged to spend doesn’t come close to 30 per cent of revenue. (And that’s before Netflix puts through steep price increases in Canada, as it’s about to do.)

It’s also not clear how much of the $100 million will be new money, on top of what Netflix already spends in Canada (it has invested in such excellent productions as Orphan Black, Alias Grace and Anne, and helped to give them global exposure). Much of the promised spending may be covered by just repackaging existing deals to assuage the government and disgruntled broadcasters.

The promised money is also a tiny sliver of what Netflix is laying out for original programming overall. The company has said it plans to spend a whopping $6 billion (U.S.) this year alone on developing content. The amount it has pledged to spend in this country each year amounts to just a tad more than 1.3 per cent of that.

So no one should get too carried away by the hefty headline figure in the Netflix announcement. The rest of Joly’s “Creative Canada” policy amounts to putting more money into some selected areas of media production, and kicking the can down the road on some thorny issues.

The government plans to put more of its own cash (amount unspecified) into the Canadian Media Fund, which helps to finance TV and digital productions, to make up for declining revenues from struggling cable and satellite providers. As they lose customers, their contribution to the fund declines, and Ottawa is just promising to keep the overall amount in the fund stable. At the same time, it will put an extra $125 million into developing a “Canadian Export Strategy” to promote sales of Canadian content around the world.

Aside from that, it promises to “refresh” the mandate of the CBC, review the Broadcasting Act, and steer clear of new taxes on the internet or any big measures to aid the struggling news industry.

The policy has all the hallmarks of a government that wants to look active in culture without upsetting too many interests at once. But, like its deal with Netflix, there’s a significant gap between rhetoric and reality.

Ottawa’s deal with Netflix may turn out to be good for Canada. But already it’s an excellent deal for Netflix