Steve Saretsky

We wanted the right to apply the cultural exemption and agreed that this would be the price for doing so.

Yeah.

I mean, bear in mind, this was a decision that legislation, as you said, we talked about a number of years ago.

Right.

So this dates back quite a while.

And at that time, the mantra of the government was make web giants pay.

Well, this is what happens when you take an approach that says we want to make web giants pay and it's consumers and others that end up footing the bill.

I'm not wholly convinced that if the government was thinking about legislation today, this is precisely what they would do.

In fact, it wouldn't shock me as part of renegotiations if Canada was willing to cede on this issue.

This doesn't feel like a Carney issue in the way that it did a Trudeau issue.

But nevertheless, I mean, it's fundamentally about legislation.

bringing in money with a cultural lobby that has had the ear of the government for a long time.

I think it's very hard to make the case that this is about jobs or about Canadian, you know, traditional Canadian culture, so-called Canadian stories, because if it was, we'd recognize that those services, as I mentioned, already invest heavily in Canada, right?

So they already...

major employers of people in this sector based on those investments.

They are already producing content that many would recognize as Canadian, but for the fact that they insist on owning the production for pretty obvious reasons.

So I don't think it's that.

I think at the end of the day, it's

something that proves popular with a certain segment, particularly in the cultural communities and in Quebec.

And so that's why we see this playing out the way that we do.