Two streaming regimes, both unsettled
After Canada–US trade talks collapsed in late August 2026, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer reportedly raised Quebec's Bill 109 directly as a trade irritant. That is according to The Globe and Mail as relayed by Michael Geist on 26 August. Prime Minister Mark Carney pointed to US demands on culture and the French language. Ambassador Mark Wiseman later confirmed that the dispute included levels of French-language content on US-based streaming services.
The episode matters because Canada's streaming rules are being pulled apart from two directions at once. Quebec is building a new regime. Ottawa is dismantling the funding mechanism it spent three years constructing.
The strongest case for these laws
The case for intervention deserves a fair hearing. French is a minority language in North America. Algorithmic recommendation on global platforms tends to favour the largest catalogues, which are overwhelmingly English. Quebec's government says Bill 109 affirms its constitutional authority over culture. The National Assembly adopted it unanimously, and it adds a right to the discoverability of original French-language content to Quebec's Charter of human rights and freedoms. If a streaming interface buries French content, there is a real cultural cost, and the same logic underlies the federal Online Streaming Act, which received royal assent on 27 April 2023.
What Bill 109 does, and what it leaves open
Bill 109 was adopted in December 2025 and is not in force. It creates a registration regime for streaming services and requires interfaces to be readily configurable in French. It authorises later regulations on the presence, proportion, promotion and discoverability of original French-language content. The province must still establish an oversight office and write the regulations that decide which platforms are covered and what they owe.
That last point is the core problem. The law is a framework with the substance deferred to regulation. Platforms cannot know whether they face a light-touch discoverability requirement, such as a French-language toggle and a prominent shelf, or a quantitative quota. Geist argues the proportion language effectively amounts to a quota. He argues services would likely meet it by trimming English-language libraries in Quebec rather than commissioning more French titles. That outcome would reduce consumer choice without necessarily funding any new French-language production.
There is also a constitutional question. Geist points to the Supreme Court's 1978 Dionne decision, which rejected an earlier Quebec attempt to regulate cable television, as evidence that broadcasting is federal jurisdiction. Quebec disputes that framing. Whichever side is right, uncertainty is itself a cost. A registration regime with open-ended content powers invites litigation before any French-language viewer benefits.
Ottawa's own retreat
The federal picture is no more settled. The CRTC's 2024 decision required foreign streamers to contribute 5 per cent of their Canadian revenues to funds for Canadian content, including local news. The Federal Court of Appeal paused those payments pending the streamers' appeal. Payments were estimated at a minimum of US$1.25 million per streamer each year. The CRTC later moved to raise the levy to 15 per cent.
In a letter to the court dated 17 July 2026, Department of Justice counsel Michael Morris wrote that the government's intention is to eliminate the base contribution requirement and replace it with government funding. Geist's 29 July analysis reads this as the end of the contribution framework the CRTC has built since 2024. That reading is his interpretation, and the replacement design has not been published.
The policy lesson
The two developments share a flaw. Each treats streaming as a lever for cultural objectives without testing whether the lever works. A percentage-of-revenue levy was contested for years and, on the evidence reported so far, collected little. A French-content proportion rule has not been written yet, and its likely effects on catalogues are untested.
A better approach would have three parts:
- Fund culture openly. If Ottawa is moving to public funding, the policy should say so and set budgets and outcomes, rather than hiding costs inside platform pricing.
- Prefer discoverability to quotas. Interface-level French options and prominent placement serve French-language audiences at low cost. Proportion rules risk shrinking the catalogue.
- Settle jurisdiction first. Quebec and Ottawa should resolve who regulates what, ideally before the trade dispute does it for them.
Trade pressure is not a policy
There is an uncomfortable dynamic here. Geist argues Ottawa will likely oppose Bill 109 and that Washington could win through the courts what it could not win at the table. For anyone who values open markets, a US demand to weaken a minority-language measure is not a principled objection. It is trade leverage on behalf of large platforms. Canada risks making its cultural policy by negotiation, abandoning the federal levy under litigation pressure and sacrificing Quebec's law to trade bargaining.
The pro-innovation position is not that French-language content does not matter. It is that proportionate tools exist, and that proportionality should be chosen on the merits. Canada's current path lets litigation and tariff talks choose instead.