Madam Speaker, I want to start today by offering a short recap to those watching at home, because this is still a developing story. There is one important newsflash that I think Canadians ought to know. The message is to get ready for another Liberal tax. That is it. The government has already taxed our gas. It has taxed our groceries. It has taxed our capital gains. God knows it has taxed our income. It is now coming for our Netflix. That is really what today is about.
The Liberal-appointed CRTC, which is an unelected, unaccountable body that regulates streaming services and digital content in this country, just mandated that companies such as Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video fork over 15% of their revenues to Ottawa. That is a 200% increase from where they were.
For someone watching at home, let us put a number on this and what it means for families. Netflix alone earns about $1.5 billion annually from Canadian subscribers, and 15% of that is $225 million. When passed on to consumers, that will be potentially three dollars or four dollars every single month per household, on top of everything else that Canadians pay. That might not sound like a lot of money, but that is exactly where the tax that Ottawa is collecting is going to go: directly to the consumer. At four dollars a month, that is $50 a year.
We know what happens when the Liberal government levies taxes on corporations. They simply get passed on to consumers. It is never a minister that pays them. It is never the government that pays them. It is always the consumer. Anybody who says that is not the case has not been here in the last 10 years.
The last thing that Canadians need right now is more taxes. On this side of the House, we will always advocate to get rid of every single one of them. Forty per cent of people in the country are within $200 of insolvency. They are within $200 of going broke. One-quarter of households are food insecure right now. We know that. We talk about it in this place all the time.
When streaming becomes more expensive, people do not stop watching; they turn to things like piracy. We know that too. Canada already has some of the highest rates of piracy in the G7. This tax, of course, will make that worse.
That is not a victory for Canadian creators. If we listen to the debate in the House, one would think that this was all about Canadian creators. Instead, it is a self-inflicted wound on the country. Of course, Conservatives will strongly and loudly oppose all the new taxes from this place, from Ottawa, on struggling families. We understand that when government takes less, families keep more of what they earn, businesses can invest and grow, and people have the freedom to make choices themselves rather than having unelected bureaucrats make those choices for them. It is a very simple argument, and I am sure that by the end of today, the folks on that side will understand it.
There is a broader narrative at play here too. This decision reveals something about how the government thinks or what the government's values really are.
First, this new Netflix tax is being levied under the guise of supporting so-called content creators. In the abstract, I think we can all agree that having more things made in Canada is good. Telling Canadian stories is a good thing. It is better for us, and it is better for our country.
However, we should consider what the argument ignores. Drake, The Weeknd, Schitt's Creek and Letterkenny are some of the most celebrated Canadian cultural exports in a generation. Beloved here at home and around the world, they succeeded not because the regulator mandated their existence but because they were actually good. They were brilliant, in fact.
We should also consider this: If we are making this argument today, I think we have to be honest about it. Off Campus is the number one show on Prime Video right now. It is filmed in Vancouver. It is based on a Canadian author's book. It features music from a Canadian band. By every common-sense measure, it is a Canadian story told by Canadians, but under the CRTC's own rules, it does not qualify as Canadian content. Not a dollar of this new tax flows to productions like it.
What exactly are we funding? We are not funding the things that Canadians are actually watching. Remember, it is the number one show. Folks in the House might not know it because it is a young adult audience, but that is what people are watching and celebrating.
Instead, we are funding what Ottawa has decided counts. It is a distinction that says everything about who this policy actually serves.
Canadian stories cannot and will not succeed just because we have taxed our way to cultural relevance. They will succeed because those stories are worth telling and people want to hear them.
Second, these taxes effectively shield broadcasters like the CBC and CTV from competition, rather than nurturing the creators who actually need the help. Over and over again, every independent analysis has proven that these funds disproportionately flow to established government institutions, the ones with relationships and high-priced government access payrolls, not the independent YouTuber in Calgary, the podcaster in Halifax and the digital filmmaker in Winnipeg who are building audiences on their own terms. They are now being penalized by the very subsidies that go to their better-connected competitors. That structure is not a recipe for a healthy, competitive marketplace, and we have discussed that in the House time and time again. It is how the Liberal government protects its cronies at the expense of our cultural ecosystem, and it says that anybody who disagrees with it must not like culture.
On that point, there is one really big foreign entity taking a very keen interest in the signals that this is sending, and that is the United States government. Let us put it plainly: Taxing American streaming giants is a provocation. We know that. They have said that. In fact, the Prime Minister admitted that himself when he rescinded the digital services tax. That was a 3% tax. This is a 15% tax. How do members think that is going to go over with the Americans? By the way, the Prime Minister did not get a single concession for rescinding that tax when times got tough. In all of this, the retaliation could fall again, and it could fall on Canadian agriculture, on Canadian lumber or manufacturing. These are industries that also employ hundreds of thousands of Canadians, who are waiting with bated breath for something from negotiations that have not taken place since October.
The Prime Minister often says that we can control what we can control, and I agree. The choice to bring in these new taxes is an entirely controllable one. Why are we voluntarily picking another fight with our largest trading partner at exactly the moment at which Canadian businesses and workers need stability, as they deserve? That makes no sense. The policy itself makes no sense, but the timing makes even less sense. Now the members opposite will try to caricature our position on this. They will say that opposing this tax means opposing Canadian culture. That is a false choice on the floor of the House of Commons, and Canadians really deserve better than that lazy argument.
Conservatives believe in Canadian stories, the ones that are worth telling. We simply disagree about how to get there, because there is another way. Instead of taxing streaming platforms and hoping the money trickles down to creators, we could expand direct production tax credits that put resources in the hands of the writers, of the directors and of the producers, not the hands of the bureaucratic behemoths this is going to fund. Instead of regulations that protect legacy broadcasters from competition, we could invest in co-production treaties with our allies, such as New Zealand, the U.K. or Australia. This would open international markets to Canadian stories and give our content creators a massive market to tell their stories.
Schitt's Creek did not succeed because a regulator forced it into a content fund. It succeeded because it was brilliant, it was funny and people chose to watch it. Our job is to create an environment in which the next Schitt's Creek gets made, not to tax Netflix and declare victory for Canadian culture on the backs of Canadian families. The Liberals never seem to learn the lessons that Canadians already know instinctively: We cannot tax a country into prosperity. Families are not variables on a spreadsheet, and artists are not government programs.
Conservatives believe in a free people, free markets and free expression. This means we will say no to yet another misguided attempt by the government to overreach into our media markets on the backs of Canadian families and charge them a brand new Netflix tax they simply cannot afford. We say not today, and not ever.