PLATFORMS FOR PEOPLE, NOT PROFIT

Digital platforms boast that they’ve “democratized” cultural production. But what would truly democratic platforms look like in Canada?

- DANIEL JOSEPH

In October, Catherine Tait, the CEO of the CBC, said in an interview that the CBC would no longer be working with Netflix to produce shows.

“Over time we start to see that we’re feeding the growth of Netflix, or we’re feeding the growth of Amazon, rather than feeding our own domestic business and industry,” she said. Earlier this year, Tait had likened Netflix’s role in Canada to “cultural imperialism,” a phrase that is rarely heard in Canada outside of media and communication studies departments at universities. The term is typically used to talk about a powerful nation imposing its culture on less powerful nations. Today, it mostly refers to the United States using its overwhelmingly dominant position in the capitalist global order to influence culture abroad – acknowledging that the United States’ cultural hegemony is part of the same project as its economic and military imperialism.

It’s not often that conversations about who should control Canadian media make it into the mainstream. We’re stuck in a catch-22 where, because of appalling levels of foreign ownership and corporate consolidation, there is little discussion of these dynamics in mainstream Canadian media. And while the left in Canada isn’t in a position to dictate new policies, Tait’s comments represent an opening into which the left can insert a radical proposal to change how we communicate with each other as well as how we create, distribute, and consume culture.