Foreign-owned streaming services will move forward with their appeal of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s (CRTC) base contributions ruling.

On Monday (Dec. 16), the Federal Court of Appeal granted the Motion Picture Association – Canada (MPA Canada) leave to appeal the CRTC’s regulatory order around base contributions for the audiovisual industry. The Court also granted Apple, Amazon and Spotify’s request to appeal the decision around audio contributions.

MPA-Canada filed for an appeal and judicial review of the CRTC’s June 4 decision to require eligible foreign-owned streaming services to contribute 5% of their annual Canadian revenues to the various funds within the Canadian broadcasting system. That includes the Independent Local News Fund, operated by the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB).

In its initial filings, MPA-Canada argued that the CRTC did not provide sufficient grounds for requiring foreign-owned streamers to contribute to news production when it is outside of their business model.

“The CRTC’s decision to require global entertainment streaming services to pay for local news is a discriminatory measure that goes far beyond what Parliament intended, exceeds the CRTC’s authority and contradicts the goal of creating a modern, flexible framework that recognizes the nature of the services global streamers provide,” said MPA-Canada president Wendy Noss in a statement at the time the appeal was filed.

CAB, Crunchyroll, Netflix Services Canada, Paramount Entertainment Canada and Pluto are named in the court documents.

The appeal is for the CRTC’s final base contributions order issued on Aug. 29, not the initial order on June 4. MPA-Canada filed a motion to appeal the final order in September.

“While we are disappointed that leave to appeal was granted in this case, we weren’t surprised,” CAB president Kevin Desjardins told Playback Daily in a statement. “We remain positive that the CRTC’s decision on initial base contributions will stand up to these legal challenges, and that funding will flow next year to support Canadian newsrooms and journalists, as well as other Canadian and Indigenous productions.”

A spokesperson for the CRTC told Playback it would be inappropriate to comment while the matter is before the Federal Court of Appeal.

The base contributions decision went into effect on Sept. 1. The CRTC ordered for 2% of revenues to go to the Canada Media Fund (though streamers can control where 1.5% of the funds go, as long as it’s split 60/40 between English- and French-language content); 1.5% to the Independent Local News Fund, 0.5% to the Indigenous Screen Office, 0.5% to funds servicing equity-deserving groups; and 0.5% to funds serving official language minority groups. The first payments aren’t due until the end of the broadcast year, on Aug. 31, 2025.

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