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The absolutely horrible decision by the CRTC to try to force online streamers to pay 15% of their revenues to fund Canadian content wasn’t the only bad decision on Thursday. The CRTC also decided to continue to stick it to Canada’s traditional broadcasters by keeping outdated spending requirements on them.

LILLEY: Carney and CRTC are attacking Canadian broadcasters as well Back to video

The only difference is that the CRTC reduced the requirements that traditional broadcasters need to pay from 30-45% of their revenues down to just 25% of their revenues.

I keep hammering this point because I think it is important and most people don’t get it. These companies are being ordered by a government regulator to commit a portion of their total revenues — not profits, but revenues — to government mandated programs.

For traditional broadcasters that will be 25% of all Canadian revenue, for online streamers, it is 15% of all Canadian revenue.

Do these companies exist to generate government revenue?

That’s before any of these companies pay any corporate income tax, for those that do. It is over and above any GST/HST revenue their business activity generates for various governments,........

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