US president Donald Trump attempts to rename Lake Ontario clearly represents a major challenge to Canadian sovereignty. This act may make for better headlines, but some of the most consequential challenges to Canada’s sovereignty and democratic decision making for public policy are considerably less theatrical.
When Parliament passed the Online Streaming Act (OSA) in April 2023, it appeared to address a straightforward problem: Canada’s broadcasting system had been designed for an era of radio and cable television, while Canadians increasingly consumed music, film, and television through online platforms. The legislation amended the Broadcasting Act to recognize “online undertakings” as a distinct class of broadcasters, bringing streaming services into a regulatory system they had been largely exempt from.
Today, however, Canadian streaming regulation through the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has become part of a much larger dispute over the country’s bilateral relationship with the United States. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has identified Canadian digital politics among the barriers facing American exporters. US Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra has publicly attacked the CRTC’s streaming requirements. US business groups have called for Ottawa to reverse them.
This pressure on Canada from the US government is no longer rhetorical and its weight is already pushing the federal government to change course. In June 2026, the federal government ordered the CRTC to reconsider new financial requirements for streaming services to contribute 15% of their Canadian revenues into Canadian content after US officials and industry groups objected. While Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture Marc Miller acknowledged that US trade retaliation was perhaps a factor in this policy reversal, the federal government also cited concerns that US streaming services would raise subscription prices using Canadian content contributions as an excuse.
Whatever the merits of the OSA, Canada retains the legal authority to regulate its broadcasting system. However, formal sovereignty over Canadian broadcasting policy and practical policy autonomy given the cultural industry’s ties to the United States are not in alignment. What happens when exercising that authority risks retaliation from Canada’s overwhelmingly larger trading partner?
Broadcasting Policy in the Streaming Era
Protecting and promoting Canadian culture in a media environment heavily influenced by the United States has been a historic concern of Canadian broadcast policy. These concerns date back to the early 20th century, when the growing availability of US-based radio signals across the border to Canadian population centers prompted anxieties about American cultural influence. This culminated in the 1929 Aird Commission, which recommended the creation of a fully national broadcasting system.
Over time, Canada’s mixed public/private system has evolved through the creation of CBC/Radio-Canada in 1936, the CRTC in 1968, and Canadian content requirements beginning with commercial radio in 1971. In 1991, the Broadcasting Act was “modernized,” but the media environment of the late-20th century changed rapidly in ways that continued to outpace existing regulatory frameworks. The 1991 Act was amended in an era still dominated by radio and television, where broadcasters operated through communications infrastructure that could be regulated and licensed by the CRTC.
The subsequent rise of streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney+, Spotify, and other online platforms fundamentally transformed how Canadians access and consume media today. These services operate differently from conventional broadcasters and increasingly compete for Canadian audiences, while existing outside of the regulatory obligations imposed on commercial broadcasters operating in Canada.
The 2023 OSA sought to address this regulatory tension by giving the CRTC greater authority to enforce requirements for streaming services operating in Canada. The regulatory philosophy was relatively straightforward: if commercial broadcasters were expected to contribute to a system supporting Canadian cultural production, why should large streaming platforms earning revenue from Canadian audiences operate entirely outside of it?
Supporters of the system argue that requiring global platforms to contribute can strengthen domestic cultural production. The creators of the Canadian series Heated Rivalry, for example, publicly defended the Online Streaming Act and its requirement that large foreign streaming platforms contribute to Canadian content. Its enormous international success has consequently become part of a broader debate over whether Canadian cultural policy even remains necessary, precisely because global streaming has changed how domestic productions reach international audiences.
A century after American radio signals began to cross the border outside of Canadian control, inspiring early Canadian broadcasting policy, today’s technology has prompted familiar debates. More recently, however, these familiar debates have extended past Canada’s cultural distinction from the United States and into the rhetorical realm of international trade law.
Cultural Policy as a Trade Irritant
The regulatory debate has expanded beyond financial contributions to supporting Canadian content industries to encompass the visibility of Canadian content itself. US negotiators have reportedly opposed Canadian requirements intended to make Canadian programming, including French-language content, more visible on streaming platforms. As a result, the regulation and promotion of Canadian content on digital platforms have become part of the wider Canada-US trade dispute – cultural policy that was once largely confined to broadcasting regulations has now become a question of what concessions Washington can extract from Ottawa.
The power asymmetry is difficult to ignore. Many of the largest streaming platforms operating in Canada (and beyond) are based in the US. A Canadian policy aimed at the largest streaming services would disproportionately affect US-based corporations, though the policy text itself may generalize its targets. What Ottawa understands as the same cultural regulation it has established since the introduction of radio broadcasting more than a century ago is now being taken by Washington under the Trump Administration as discriminatory treatment of US industry in Canada.
This distinction certainly matters under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA). During the first formal joint review on July 1, 2026, the Trump Administration officially declined to renew the agreement in its current form. The three North American countries of this trading bloc are now in a phase of ongoing negotiations dominated by US demands for concessions. Indeed, the Trump Administration’s 2026 Trade Policy Agenda explicitly targets Canada, maintaining that regulations are, “discriminatory and restrictive digital measures, including its Online Streaming Act.”
Although the Trump Administration refused to renew CUSMA in its current form, it technically remains in effect under its original sunset clause until July 1, 2036. Importantly, the agreement contains national-treatment provisions intended to limit discriminatory treatment among member states. The original agreement signed by the first Trump Administration that came into effect in 2020 preserved Canada’s longstanding cultural industries exception. Article 32.6 broadly exempts Canadian measures concerning cultural industries, including broadcasting, film, video, and music, from most of the agreement’s obligations. Canada therefore retains substantial room to regulate streaming as cultural policy.
The exemption is not, however, an absolute political shield: CUSMA also permits the United States or Mexico to respond with measures of “equivalent commercial effect” where a Canadian cultural measure would otherwise have been inconsistent with the agreement. In other words, CUSMA can protect Ottawa’s legal right to pursue this form of independent public policy while simultaneously giving Washington the ability to impose a cost for doing so.
A Red Line for Canada
Recent events surrounding the OSA make that tension particularly visible, especially as Ottawa has drawn a red line over Canada’s cultural industries during the 2026 trade war crisis. The federal government’s policy reversals reflect the new infrastructures and political conditions through which international trade is negotiated. Streaming platforms operate across borders, and cultural measures are increasingly scrutinized to comply with trade rules, platform business models, and bilateral politics.
Furthermore, the most recent battle over streaming services is not the first salvo over Canadian digital policy in the US trade war. In June 2025, Ottawa abruptly rescinded its Digital Services Tax, designed to take in forgone tax revenues from US Big Tech companies who profited from Canadian users, after the Trump Administration suspended trade negotiations, stating their opposition to the measure. The federal government explicitly hoped that rescinding the tax would allow negotiations with Washington to resume. While taxation and cultural regulation raise different questions, the episode demonstrates how quickly domestic politics affecting powerful US industrial interests have become bargaining chips for the federal government in negotiating its bilateral relationship with the Trump Administration.
CUSMA does not prevent Canada from regulating streaming services, however, Canada’s attempt to regulate culture in a market structurally dominated by US firms makes cultural sovereignty inseparable from trade politics. The legal space to regulate may remain intact even while the political cost of exercising it rises.
Canada still has the legal ability to make independent public policy, but it needs courage to practice policy autonomy at the negotiating table. If exercising that sovereignty increasingly carries the threat of economic retaliation by the US, Canada must take economic measures to defend that sovereignty. If the US finds that this red line can be crossed, what other economic concessions will the Trump Administration demand?
