Canada and Netflix strike a deal to promote local content

The Canadian government made a deal with Netflix, which has agreed to invest 500 million Canadian dollars to create Canadian content. The company will establish a ‘permanent production presence’ in Canada, which will be the first time it has done so outside of the USA. Netflix has received criticism, as people fear that local content will disappear in the face of what some consider to be unfair competition. Yet there are concerns that the Canada-Netflix deal will not solve these issues, as ‘the company has not had to abide by the same regulatory rules as Canadian broadcasters‘. In addition, Quebec’s Minister of Culture and Communications said he felt ‘angry’ and ‘speechless’ that the deal did not define the proportion of the money that would be dedicated to original French-language content. The government did not decide to impose special taxes on Netflix, as was suggested in January.