The CRTC says online streaming companies that earn more than $10 million in annual revenues in Canada must register with the regulator by late November.
"I think a lot of people take a look at this and feel like it's the thin edge of the wedge [and] that more regulation is on the way," he said in an interview with CBC News. The Act doesn't define what that content should be or how much support will be required, and delegates that task to the CRTC. "What it's created in the short term is poison for an innovative industry, which is uncertainty," Brown said. "Nobody knows how this is going to play out. Nobody knows what our obligations are going to be. Nobody knows if we're going to benefit from it."
The commission will also be holding consultations, starting in the winter, that could potentially redefine what counts as Canadian content.As for various claims on social media that the CRTC's move is a form of censorship or an attack on free speech, Geist says emphatically that is not true.