Politically, the\u00a0Trudeau\u00a0government can now claim a victory for giving a leg up to Canadian producers without imposing a new tax on Canadians or going to battle with members of the industry to convince them to pitch in new money.<\/p>\n
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- Heritage minister orders CRTC to review decision lowering Canadian content<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- \n
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Yet, there are several outstanding questions for Canada’s cultural producers, who will undoubtedly be keen to hear the specifics of how this money will be spent.<\/p>\n
It also raises questions about\u00a0exactly how much new Canadian content this Netflix\u00a0commitment\u00a0will generate, beyond what the company would have produced anyway.\u00a0<\/p>\n
CBC Television\u00a0and Netflix are currently working together on a second season of\u00a0Anne<\/em>, based on the Anne of Green Gables <\/em>novels. The CBC\u00a0also collaborated with Netflix to produce the six-part miniseries Alias Grace<\/em>, based on the Margaret Atwood novel of the same name. It was brought to the screen by Canadian filmmakers Sarah Polley and Mary Harron.<\/p>\n
Outside the Canada Media Fund<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The money would not be contributed to the Canada Media Fund\u00a0but would exist\u00a0outside the fund. It’s not yet clear\u00a0who will get to use it to create programming with Netflix.<\/p>\n
The CMF gets money from the government of Canada and cable and satellite companies such as Bell Media, Cogeoco, Telus and Vid\u00e9otron. Producers looking for financing for their projects can apply to the fund for support.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Anne\"](\"https:\/\/i.cbc.ca\/1.4310514.1506559026!\/fileImage\/httpImage\/image.jpg_gen\/derivatives\/original_620\/anne.jpg\")
<\/p>\nNetflix already produces some original Canadian content, including its co-production with CBC Television of Anne, based on the Anne of Green Gables novels. (Sophie Giraud\/Northwood Productions\/CBC\/Canadian Press)<\/p>\n
During the Heritage Department’s public consultations, Netflix\u00a0lobbied against being treated like a conventional broadcaster, with all the financial commitments that would entail.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We’ve been doing significant investments on our own, and will continue \u2014 and, honestly, [it]\u00a0will only grow significantly over the next couple of years,” Elizabeth Bradley, vice-president of content at\u00a0Netflix,\u00a0told The Canadian Press in 2016. “But regulation is not helping to encourage that for us.”<\/p>\n
Good deal?<\/h2>\n
Prof.\u00a0Pierre B\u00e9<\/span>langer of the University of Ottawa says\u00a0Netflix\u00a0is “getting away with murder.”<\/p>\n
“It’s really a drop in the bucket. One hundred million dollars per year that\u00a0Netflix\u00a0is now committed to is out of the pool of $7 billion that\u00a0Netflix\u00a0is intended to spend over the next year.”<\/p>\n
That’s just 1.42 per cent\u00a0of the company’s expected expenditures, said B\u00e9<\/span>langer.\u00a0Netflix\u00a0still doesn’t have to tax Canadians for its services, pay any taxes to the government or have to abide by Canadian content quotas.<\/p>\n
Rosalie Wyonch, on the other hand, thinks that at first blush\u00a0it sounds like a good arrangement.<\/p>\n
Wyonch, of the C.D. Howe Institute, has done research on cross-border digital content and taxation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“This sounds like a good middle ground, because now they’ll be funding Canadian content, but we aren’t imposing so many restrictions and requirements on them that they just choose not to do business in Canada anymore.”<\/p>\n
She’s curious whether other content producers could be encouraged to make similar contributions or whether this will only apply to\u00a0Netflix.<\/p>\n
No Netflix\u00a0tax<\/h2>\n
The idea of a\u00a0Netflix\u00a0tax first emerged before the last federal election, when Stephen Harper warned that Canadians needed to vote Conservative\u00a0or face a tax on the use of the streaming service.<\/p>\n
It reared its head\u00a0again in June, when the Commons heritage committee\u00a0recommended a tax on streaming services, suggesting it could bring in hundreds of millions of dollars that could be given to\u00a0the CMF to finance Canadian productions.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Justin\u00a0Trudeau\u00a0rejected the idea outright.<\/p>\n
“We’re not going to be raising taxes on the middle class through an internet broadband tax. That is not an idea we are taking on,” he said at the time.<\/p>\n
Collaborating with major players like Netflix is in line with comments\u00a0the heritage minister has made previously.<\/p>\n
“I think people are telling me that they want the government\u00a0to adapt to how they consume information, how they search\u00a0for content, and that they shouldn’t be adapting to how government works,”\u00a0Joly\u00a0told\u00a0CBC Radio’s\u00a0Metro Morning<\/em> in March.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p><\/p>\n
Article source: http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/politics\/netflix-canadian-content-broadcaster-1.4309381?cmp=rss<\/a>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Internet streaming service Netflix\u00a0will spend at least\u00a0half a billion dollars over the next five years to fund original Canadian productions,\u00a0CBC News has learned. The funding will officially be announced tomorrow by Heritage Minister M\u00e9lanie\u00a0Joly\u00a0as part of a speech unveiling\u00a0her vision for Canadian content and cultural industries in the digital world. It comes after months of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-93131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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