The absolutely horrible decision by the CRTC to try to force online streamers to pay 15% of their revenues to fund Canadian content wasn’t the only bad decision on Thursday. The CRTC also decided to continue to stick it to Canada’s traditional broadcasters by keeping outdated spending requirements on them.
The only difference is that the CRTC reduced the requirements that traditional broadcasters need to pay from 30-45% of their revenues down to just 25% of their revenues.
The Pentagon wants to see Canada articulate a clear plan on how the country intends to meet NATO’s new military spending benchmark before resuming binational defence planning co-operation.
The absence of a plan to spend 3.5 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product on the military, plus an additional 1.5 per cent of GDP on defence infrastructure, appears to be at the heart of this week’s suspension of the U.S.–Canada Permanent Joint Board on Defence (PJBD).
Senior Pentagon officials, speaking on background Thursday to mostly Canadian journalists, also cited the absence of a decision on whether to proceed with the full purchase of American-made F-35 fighter jets as another major irritant.
OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) — Large online streaming services must contribute 15% of their Canadian revenues to Canadian content, the country’s federal broadcast regulator said Thursday.
That figure is three times the 5% initial contribution requirement the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, CRTC, set out in 2024, which is being challenged in court by U.S.-based major streamers, including Apple, Amazon and Spotify.
The CRTC made the decision as part of its implementation of the Online Streaming Act, which the U.S. has identified as a trade irritant ahead of trade negotiations with Canada.
Thanks Carney, you sure a master negotiator.
The Pentagon’s May 18 decision to pause U.S. participation in the Permanent Joint Board on Defence should not be treated as a routine bureaucratic dispute. The board is old, but not irrelevant. It sits inside the history of Canada–U.S. continental defence and carries symbolic weight beyond its meeting schedule.
The United States framed the pause as a response to Canada’s failure to make credible progress on defence commitments. That explanation may be partly true, but it is unlikely to be the whole story. The timing matters. The decision lands just weeks before the review of the Canada-United-States-Mexico Agreement, known in Washington as USMCA and in Canada as CUSMA, begins on July 1. It also comes as the United States reorganizes defence policy around homeland security, Western Hemisphere control, allied burden sharing, and deterrence of China.
On Thursday, Canada’s broadcast regulator appears ready to throw a grenade into the already fraught world of Canada-US trade talks. The CRTC is set to unveil new rules on Canadian content and discoverability for streaming platforms.
That would include everything from Canadian-based Crave or CBC’s Gem, but also American services from Apple Music to Netflix, Prime to Disney+.
Two fewer meetings a year.
In practical terms, this is the impact of Washington’s decision to suspend the Canada-U.S. Permanent Joint Board on Defence — not an eviction from Norad fortress headquarters within a Colorado mountain, not an end to joint military exercises and exchanges.
Symbolically, though, the tweet on a slow-news holiday Monday from Elbridge (“Bridge”) Colby, a top adviser to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, sounds like a gangland threat uttered through clenched teeth: after all we’ve done together, are you really prepared to throw it all away, and have you really thought it through?
A report that Washington wanted a “down payment” from Canada just to begin talks on extending the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) provoked a wide Canadian consensus that we should refuse to pay for the “privilege” of sitting at the table. That instinct is right. But refusal is not a strategy. If Canada wants to protect its interests, it needs to show up with a clear plan. Here, I propose one built around an underappreciated truth in Washington.
We are about to have the door slammed in our face.
Candidate Mark Carney presented himself as someone capable of securing a strong deal with President Trump for Canada. Both before and after his becoming prime minister, his comments about President Trump and the US have been framed by his negative narrative and often fail to discuss the facts. He has also made a number of negative comments critical of America while implying that the President is a problem without being direct. At the same time, Brookfield Asset Management, where Mr. Carney previously served as chair, remains headquartered in New York rather than in Toronto, where it used to be. He had advised the company’s shareholders to support the move to America. He has positioned himself as a spokesman for the world’s “middle powers.” He promotes a “new world order,” but critics argue that this largely repackages the hyper-globalization economic model of the late twentieth century. This is not how one engages in international diplomacy and trade. Furthermore, he has not negotiated a new trade agreement between Canada and the US.
For the first time since Canadians started boycotting travel to the US to protest the trade war, trips south of the border have started to pick up — slowly.
Travel to the US inched up 1.4% in April compared to the same month last year, with 1.8 million Canucks visiting the Land of the Free, according to monthly data released by Statistics Canada this week.
For months, Canadian officials have maintained that the long-awaited opening of the $6.4 billion Gordie Howe International Bridge connecting Detroit and Windsor, Ont., is dependent on various testing and commissioning tasks.
But fresh comments from a Canadian cabinet member as well as two top U.S. officials suggests there is a link between the current trade war and the new border crossing’s opening timeline.
A White House official on Friday said the Trump administration “continues to engage with all of our trading partners to resolve longstanding unfair trade practices.”
Canada’s auto industry is at an “inflection point” and a new report suggests its future success hinges on restoring free trade with the U.S.
The report by RBC, released Tuesday, looked at four paths to determine options the industry could take, but also the trade-offs that would come with them.
“Canada is at a strategic crossroads when it comes to the future of its auto industry and essential to that future is securing free trade with the United States,” said Jordan Brennan, managing director at RBC Thought Leadership and author of the report, in an interview.
If Trump accomplishes his promise and reshores assembly then Canada can look forward to cleaning up Chinese EV fires.
A large study of cellphone presence in more than 250 U.S. destinations reveals a sharp drop of up to 65 per cent in the number of Canadian visitors to American locations in the two years between April 2024 and March 2026.
Oddly, however, exactly three places showed an increase, in the form of a surge of between 21 and 35 per cent. Researchers are not sure why, but Gainesville Fla., Cleveland, Ohio, and Portland, Ore., alone saw the number of Canadians shoot up, at least based on their cellphone usage.
Whether at the grocery store or the NSLC, Martha Reynolds pays attention to where products are from.
“I’m doing my very best to not buy American,” she said outside a Halifax location of the province’s Crown-run alcohol retailer.
For alcohol, this means bourbon purchases have been replaced with scotch whisky, but she’s made other changes as well.
A decline in travel to the U.S. may be more significant than it first appeared, according to Canadian researchers.
Initial estimates based on border crossings from Canada into the U.S. suggested a decrease of about 25 per cent, wrote researchers from the University of Toronto, citing data from Statistics Canada.
Recent findings, argue researchers Karen Chapple, Yihoi Jung and Jeff Allen, suggest that this year-over-year analysis of crossings doesn’t provide the full picture.
As Canada prepares to accept more Chinese-made electric vehicles into the country, a U.S. senator is warning that although Canada-U.S. ties are strained, Canadian officials should be cautious when making agreements with China’s government.
“I understand that Canada is looking elsewhere and trying to diversify,” Michigan Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin said in an interview on Rosemary Barton Live that aired Sunday morning.
“I think the point that I would make and did make to Canadian leaders is, just because we have become more difficult doesn’t mean the Chinese are always the straightest shooters when it comes to national security,” Slotkin told host Rosemary Barton.
