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Comment by v77 | Hacker News Reader

The bigger news from this budget update is that Netflix/Prime avoided a 'Cancon tax', where they would be forced to make more Canadian content for the services, funded by an added levy on consumers in the country. We dodged a bullet there, I certainly don't mind these changes.

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I'm old enough to remember when CanCon was brought in to broadcast TV and radio. Lots of business owners whined loudly about having to not import cheap second-hand culture from foreign places and how it cut in to their personal wealth generation capacity. There was a bit of a rough transition (cough Beachcombers cough) but eventually the investment paid off with interest.

I wouldn't resent a cultural development fee. It helps maintain a virtual wall across the southern border to protect our delicate assets.

Is it really effective across all media? Canadian radio is awful IMHO because of CanCon rules: there aren’t enough Canadian artists within a specific radio genre to saturate a station’s quota, so in many cases we end up hearing the same artists repeatedly throughout any given day.

That was the argument used 50 years ago. It hasn't been true for about 40 years. Unless your genre is "American pop artists" or maybe "Italian renaissance original instruments".

Really? Because all I hear on my local rock station is Nickelback.

Bieber fatigue?

Try Nickelback! Shudder

To me it sounds a little ridiculous to have the taxpayer subsidize... entertainment.

I mean, it's one of the most lucrative business on earth. If Canadian content producers want people to watch their content they should just... make things that people want to watch? Worked fine for pretty much evert major studio out there.

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