OTTAWA—A federal bill deemed both a lifeline and a death knell for Canadian content in a digital world cleared its final hurdle in Parliament when it passed in the Senate on Thursday after one of the longest studies in the upper chamber’s history., is expected to receive royal assent and become law later Thursday, bringing to an end more than a year of charged political debate between the Liberal government and the proposed legislation’s critics.
The bill also calls on streaming services to contribute to the “creation, production and presentation” of Canadian content on their platforms. It would give the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission broad powers to enforce the act, including the ability to penalize platforms that violate it., the bill garnered support in Canada’s production and entertainment sector as a way to spur investment in local programming and productions.
It also drew a wave of criticism from platforms like YouTube and TikTok, who have charged that online creators and everyday users of the video-sharing apps would fall prey to changes governing how their content is produced and discovered.