Heritage committee moves to table 2017 “Netflix deal”

The Heritage Committee will be making the 2017 “Netflix deal” public after the NDP brought a motion to the committee compelling its disclosure. At Monday’s committee meeting -- the first since debate on Bill C-10 came to a conclusion -- NDP MP Heather McPherson brought forward a motion to have the Department of Canadian Heritage, along with the committee, table a copy of the initial agreement and any subsequent amendments between Canadian Heritage and Netflix Inc. signed in 2017 and entered into under the Investment Canada act. In September 2017, then-Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly, unveiled her cultural strategy which included a $500 million commitment from Netflix to produce content in Canada, but in which the minister declined to impose sales taxes on foreign digital services. McPherson said she brought the motion forward out of concern when she saw the 2021 budget come forward which included a tax exemption for Netflix. “I'm worried that without being able to understand what is in that agreement, without being able to understand what is being given, or what gifts are being given to Netflix, it's very difficult for us to understand if it's an appropriate playing field, an equal playing field, for the broadcasting sector,” she told the committee. Liberal MP Julie Dabrusin said that she supported the bill in the interest of transparency, but noted that she “absolutely disagrees with the premise underlying the motion.” “I'm shocked that we have to make such a request for documents that we should have known about for a long time. This is an agreement that has significant impact. And we should be informed of them. So I think that for transparency's sake, we should have access to the main ideas between the agreement of the government and Netflix,” Bloc Quebecois MP Martin Champoux added, according to simultaneous translation. In 2019, then-NDP MP François Choquette filed a judicial review application with the Federal Court to contest the alleged premature closing of an investigation into the deal that he claimed underserved francophone Canadians. In response, the government argued that the deal should have never been referred to as an agreement, which was part of the reasoning for why the details should not be publicly disclosed. The “deal” was classified as an investment made in Canada by Netflix under the Investment Canada Act, which states that details of such investments must remain confidential.

Heritage committee moves to table 2017 “Netflix deal”

Brief | June 14, 2021

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Heritage committee moves to table 2017 “Netflix deal”

Brief | June 14, 2021

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