Banff World Media Festival-goers are used to unpredictable Canadian Rockies weather, where drizzling rain can become snow showers and then balmy sunshine over a single day due to geography and elevation.
But escalating cross-border trade and political tensions between the U.S. and Canada will see Donald Trump — who has talked about annexing his northern neighbor as the 51st U.S. state and putting tariffs on non-U.S. movies — casting a dark cloud as Banff’s 47th edition kicks off this weekend. That follows in early June the federal government in Ottawa killing regulatory plans to triple a local tax on foreign, mostly U.S. streamers to get more favorable terms on a new cross-border trade deal from the U.S. president.
Canada caving to U.S. pressure followed Motion Pictures Association reps in Canada taking aim at Canada’s Online Streaming Act, a law that forces U.S. digital giants to finance Canadian media content production, the U.S. ambassador calling for its repeal and the U.S. Trade Representative branding the legislation as “discriminatory” towards U.S. companies.
Getting foreign streamers to support local content creators so Canadians could view their own films and TV shows rather than rely on Netflix and Prime Video for popular fare may have seemed a good idea among bureaucrats and regulators in Ottawa. And it was certainly applauded by local unions and guilds, indie producers and others looking for American web giants to dig deeper in their pockets to underwrite homemade content.
