Opinion | Our culture is one of the many things Canada will never trade away to Trump - Toronto Star

A robust cultural economy gives Canadian artists and producers the means to tell our stories, share our histories, and express our values.

Fans of ‘Heated Rivalry’ flock to a surprise Red Carpet featuring Hudson Williams who is signing autographs at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto. Sept. 17, 2026. Steve Russell/Toronto Star

 Stephen Stohn is a founding partner of the entertainment law firm Stohn Hay Cafazzo Heim Finlay LLP, executive producer of the Degrassi television franchise and Chancellor Emeritus of Trent University.

Howard Law is the author of MediaPolicy.ca and the book “Canada vs California: How Ottawa took on Netflix and the streaming giants” (Lorimer, 2024).

This month movie lovers and filmmakers flocked yet again to the Toronto International Film Festival. 

TIFF is a stunning Canadian achievement built reel by reel and brick by brick over the last 51 years. It is the top global festival for commercial films and indisputably the first-pick among North American festivals.

TIFF brings together the finest newly released global and Canadian films.Audiences, industry, and the federal government have all played a role in building TIFF into one of Canada’s most important cultural institutions. 

But this year, TIFF was launched under the dark clouds of a nation-defining trade war. When the histories of the Trump trade assault of 2026 are finally written, we will remember how close the Trump administration came to reducing Canada to a cultural colony of the United States.

In the days leading up to the negotiating trade deadline of Aug. 21, rumours swirled that perhaps both the Online Streaming Act and the Online News Act were about to meet a nasty end.

But one of the key reasons the August “deal” went sideways was that Prime Minister Mark Carney rejected the Trump administration’s last-minute demand that Canada abandon regulatory measures flowing from the Online Streaming Act to promote Canadian shows and songs on U.S. streaming services that are operating in Canada. 

Though U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade negotiators may play down the threat to Canadian cultural sovereignty, it is clear that the president is backing Hollywood studios and California-based streamers. 

Netflix and the other U.S. streaming companies are seizing the Trump moment to push for near-zero regulatory contribution to Canadian content. They oppose the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission’s (CRTC) determination to pair crucial financial support for making Canadian shows with the costless but invaluable commitment to making them visible on streaming platforms. 

To that end, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos secured a meeting with Carney in a New York City hotel room in late May. We don’t know what he told the prime minister, but a week later Carney overturned the CRTC’s ruling that the streamers match the cash payments to Cancon already required of Canadian cable companies. 

While Ottawa’s commitment to the Online Streaming Act seemed to waver this summer, the prime minister now appears to have decided that culture, like all Canadian industries, is worth fighting for. We can no more surrender the Online Streaming Act than we would dismantle TIFF and send our Canadian filmmakers south to the Sundance Festival in Utah.

Director Peter Ho-sun Chan signs autographs at the red carpet for the movie “The Road Not Taken”  staring Zhou Xun, and Wang Xiao, at Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto. Sept. 18, 2026. Steve Russell/Toronto Star

This resolve is what Canadians want and, as public polling on the Online Streaming Act over the last several years confirms, have consistently wanted. 

A Pollara poll last October, for example, found that 87 per cent of Canadians support the Online Streaming Act in principle and defending it from Trump, with results consistent across regions and provinces, and in both English and French-speaking Canada. 

Canadians from across the country support cultural legislation. We don’t want it traded away. 

As a tool of cultural sovereignty, the Online Streaming Act is elegant in its simplicity. It requires both global and Canadian streamers to finance Canadian content in a manner proportionate to their ever-growing share of the Canadian audio and audio-visual market. 

Just as importantly, the CRTC is preparing to take the crucial next step by harnessing the streamers’ extraordinary reach into Canadian living rooms. New regulations would make Canadian content more discoverable, sharing space with the foreign-made hits and blockbusters recommended on our home screen and in our search results. 

None of this prevents Canadians from watching American programs, listening to American music, or enjoying the best entertainment the world has to offer. All the Online Streaming Act does is ensure that Canadian culture is at the table, not on the menu. 

But the cultural objective inevitably conflicts with Hollywood’s century-old dominance of global markets and audiences. 

The unique economics of Hollywood production give American streamers and studios an enormous advantage. Big-budget cultural productions recover much of their cost in the huge U.S. domestic market, allowing them to exploit foreign markets at little additional cost. Canadian producers, serving a domestic market a fraction of the size, must find another recipe for success. 

That is why Canada, like other middle nations, has long adopted measures designed to sustain domestic cultural industries in the face of overwhelming imported competition. 

This is not simply cultural protectionism. It is recognition that culture is more than an economic sector.

A robust cultural economy gives Canadian artists and producers the means to tell our stories, share our histories, and express our values.

A nation cannot know itself if the stories, histories and values that define us belong to someone else.  That is worth fighting for.

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 Stephen Stohn is a founding partner of the entertainment law firm Stohn Hay Cafazzo Heim Finlay LLP, executive producer of the Degrassi television franchise and Chancellor Emeritus of Trent University.

Howard Law is the author of MediaPolicy.ca and the book “Canada vs California: How Ottawa took on Netflix and the streaming giants” (Lorimer, 2024).

Opinion articles are based on the author’s interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details