What now? Digital policy is cultural policy
The month of June 2026 was a doozy for federal cultural policy. The cultural industries—and particularly the music, film, television and digital media industries—are trying to make sense of the government’s digital strategy moves and predict what will come next. At the same time, the future of the Canada-US-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) remains uncertain. Pundits agree this will be one of the most consequential trade negotiations in recent history for Canada’s economy. If this past month is any indication, it will also be one of the most consequential trade negotiations for the future of Canada’s culture.
Two major developments have left those with an interest in Canada’s culture and identity wondering what the government’s position on digital cultural policy is, or will be. Those developments are: the government appearing to reverse its position on taxing foreign streamers, and the absence of cultural policy considerations from the government’s AI for All national artificial intelligence strategy.
Reversal of a core policy: The federal government directs the CRTC to review its May 21 Canadian content decision
On June 3, Marc Miller, Minister of Canadian Culture and Identity announced that the government would direct the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), Canada’s broadcast regulator, to review its May 21 decision that raised the financial contribution from foreign streaming giants towards Canadian content from 5% of revenues in Canada up to 15% of those revenues. That decision had been applauded by the creative industries and the wider sector, but roundly condemned by foreign streamers and their lobbyists, some of whom had already brought court actions against the CRTC to dispute details included in Bill C-11 (or the Online Streaming Act), the legislation which introduced the 5% contribution.
The pro-tech, U.S. government administration had already identified Bill C-11 as an irritant for CUSMA. The increase to 15% in the CRTC’s decision made this decidedly worse. Miller’s announcement on June 3 cited affordability for Canadian consumers as the rationale for the review of the CRTC decision, with the Prime Minister telling reporters that no one should be forced to pay an extra “$50” on their streaming subscriptions because of the regulation. No objective evidence has been provided by the government to back up this projected cost increase for consumers.
Instead, in its press release titled “Government of Canada announces immediate support to strengthen Canadian culture and ensure Canadian content remains affordable,” the government announced an annual commitment of $600 million to the audio and audiovisual industries to make up for the loss of the streamers’ contributions. No details are available yet to confirm how that $600 million will be allocated, only that it is likely to come in stages starting late summer or early fall.
I’ve been asked by government officials if it matters where the money comes from: from regulated contributions, or directly from government. In the absence of a transparent articulation of what the policy rationale is for this move, it does matter. The government’s decision has been seen by many as a capitulation to U.S. trade pressures and an abandonment of the principle that had driven broadcasting policy changes in Canada for the past decade: that those who benefit from the Canadian content system should contribute to it. The government has since said that online streamers will still have to pay a fee to support Canadian media production, but has provided no details. The affordability argument is weak when, instead of having the choice to pay more as consumers, Canadians are now paying $600 million of taxpayers funds directly into the industry, whether they wish to or not. The audio and audiovisual sectors put more than a decade of work and thousands of hours into the development and review of C-10, and subsequently C-11, and several CRTC hearings were held to inform the CanCon decisions, with the understanding in good faith that the result would be a new regulatory bargain that included foreign streamers.
As such, the $600 million appears arbitrary, and with a lack of details at their disposal, industry players are once again lobbying for what they see as their portion of that pie. As some have pointed out, an annual $600 million government allocation can be more vulnerable to changes from this or a future government than a regulatory bargain enshrined through the CRTC. Whether or not this is true remains to be seen.
The absence of cultural policy in Canada’s National Artificial Intelligence Strategy: AI for All
Another major development came on June 4, with the federal government’s launch of AI for All, Canada’s new national AI strategy. The strategy is an industry playbook for pro-AI adoption. It sets the adoption of AI and the growth of the largely undefined sovereign AI industry as Canada’s key goals.
Cultural advocates have been pushing for a presence in the government’s AI consultations for many years through the usual channels: meetings with officials, ministerial invitations to conference sessions, submissions to government studies and consultations and appearances before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. The government responded to pressure from the cultural sector to include it in its policy process by holding a National Summit on AI and Culture in Banff, Alberta in March 2026, attended by Minister of AI and Digital Innovation Evan Solomon and Minister Miller. Participants were required to pay their transportation and give three days of time in order to participate, a high bar for a sector made up of workers who are often self-employed and are among the lowest-compensated professionals in the country.
The AI strategy responds to none of the major cultural policy priorities identified in two years of submissions and consultations. It contains:
- No copyright or creative IP protections, and in fact no mention of copyright at all;
- Nothing to ensure use of creative IP by AI systems is compensated or to acknowledge the impact of AI on the creative value chain;
- No governance or legislative guardrails for the most basic protections of creative content; and
- No acknowledgment of the minimum requirement of transparency that has been called for by all social and cultural policy actors.
Given that, the cultural sector is, quite reasonably, asking what influence these thousands of hours of effort have had on the AI strategy. The answer is vanishingly little. It’s important to note here that this result is a common one in horizontal federal government policy issues, in part because the cultural sector itself is fragmented in its approach, with different players asking for different things, and lacks the robust evidence base it needs to influence industrial policy. That’s a topic for another time.
AI for All includes a section titled “Ensure AI reflects Canadian identity, culture and inclusion” that lists four key actions. Three of the four reflect what can only be seen as a bare minimum standard for the government’s existing commitments under the Official Languages Act, the Accessible Canada Act and its already-in-place requirement that government initiatives be analyzed through a Gender-Based Analysis Plus lens.
The other key action, that Canada will establish a $50 million Creative Technology Program to support Canadian creators in using AI on their own terms, reads as a blast from the past. It mirrors the previously announced $50 million commitment over four years that the government made in the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy. That funding was to start flowing in 2024-25 and was to be overseen by Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) as part of a skills development initiative. It was never made available to the sector, and was assumed to be a casualty of Prime Minister Carney’s expenditure reduction requirement of all government departments in 2025. Sector advocates should be watching the roll-out of this commitment closely and proactively influencing its direction.
Despite what it suggests, the title “AI for All” does not mean AI in service to all. Making Canadians trust AI (one of the stated goals of the strategy) gets the end goal wrong. Very little is said in the strategy to indicate that the government has taken this goal seriously, aside from a belief that if Canadians can only understand AI better, they will trust it and use it in their daily lives, bringing an undefined benefit to all. This is chillingly clear in the section on literacy, which says “the ultimate goal is to ensure Canadians are not passive users of AI, but informed participants in an AI-enabled society.”
AI should be designed, regulated and governed with the explicit goal that it be trustworthy. Civil society cannot simply be trained to trust and adopt untrustworthy tools and systems; whether those are trustworthy or not will determined by how those tools and systems are built and designed, and by the social and cultural outcomes they are designed to produce.
The bigger question: What is this government’s policy direction for digital cultural policy?
In addition to regulation under C-11 and the AI strategy, the government has indicated that it is close to the finish line in its work to modernize the audiovisual sector supports that it provides. This has long been understood as code for a potential restructure of the federal agencies and organizations that deliver support to the film, television and digital media sectors: Telefilm Canada, the Canada Media Fund and the National Film Board.
The fact that the modernization is happening while the government is changing course on foreign streaming regulation and leaving culture largely out of its national AI strategy makes change to its AV sector support even more important to establishing a new policy direction. The policy objectives must be clear and the structure should follow them, not the other way around. It also raises the question of whether part of the $600 million will cover costs associated with the restructuring process.
Internationally, Canada had previously been seen as a leader, or at least an ally, in the global movement to regulate U.S. internet giants. This is a classic example of Canada’s soft power in the shifting geopolitical landscape. While the nature of the relationship between Canada and the U.S. makes this area more fraught for Canada than other countries, many others are moving ahead with digital services taxes and contributions to domestic content. Without a re-articulation of its intentions, Canada will lose ground in its relationships with other countries—for example, those in the European Union—seeking to regulate or otherwise reign in the influence of U.S. tech giants.
Canadians, including the cultural sector, are well aware that this moment is an urgent one for the country. When change of this magnitude is on the table, and Canadian identity/ies as a concept has surged in our collective imagination, I would argue that it is more important, not less, to ask: what is the public good that Canada is working to achieve through its cultural policy in this moment? How can we act today in a way that will serve us in the future?
Put another way, how do we ensure that strategies to deal with this moment take into account all types of outcomes: economic, social, environmental and cultural? And how can decision-makers be empowered to ensure that the outcomes we are working towards in one area are built into the policies of others, particularly in a digital strategy that, as AI for All rightly identifies, impacts us all?
The answers cannot and should not be the same as in the past, but they deserve thoughtful policy work across government departments and priorities. The principle we need now is that cultural policy is digital policy. Getting one right helps us succeed in the other. And the action? That comes through collaborative and transparent work inside government and with the participation of the cultural sector and Canadians on what comes next.