And in so doing, drowns out local culture. The CBC has the production of Canadian cultural content (CanCon) as part of its mandate. Why must everyone in the world watch American TV? Wouldn't it ultimately be better if every culture produced their own content and then we could maintain some local identity?

The word imperialism is not being used lightly, here. TV has an enormous impact on a society. It influences how people think, which in turn can influence their politics.

Why shouldn’t everyone in the world have the choice of watching American tv?

If Canadian shows are on the front page, they have a much better chance of getting views and thus surviving, so that people have a choice to keep watching. Canadians can and will find out about the most popular American shows through other media channels, so why do those shows also need to be on the front page?

I don’t know to which front page you’re referring but honestly the comments from the CBC head quoted in the article sound like those of a bureaucrat who’s seeing her power to influence what Canadians should watch being diminished by Netflix’s presence, and being angry about it.

So I don't think the problem is Netflix draining out local culture with foreign ones.

Damn, those imperialist bulk cargo ships...

Many cultures do produce their own content, but it's often less entertaining than American content due to budget constraints, censorship restrictions or other government interference.

I think seeing at this as cultural imperialism is incorrect - it might be so if the US were somehow forcing other countries to watch American content, or if Netflix only served American content, but neither of those are the case. This just a matter of commerce in a global marketplace.

What would be better is people having a choice, not being kept in a government-enforced media cocoon in order to keep foreign influence from affecting their cultural identity.

Regulating media consumption online, a traditionally global marketplace, to your national content is just a terrible idea in every sense.

The CBC has rightly identified this. They know that most people get Netflix by plugging a box into their TV, just as they used to with a cable box. The CBC is not proposing the regulation of the web, it's proposing regulation of a platform that is essentially cable delivered over a different pipe.

Edit: moreover, the content that is on Netflix isn't open like the web, it's closed content protected by regional distribution contracts.

What about YouTube premium? They offer content more akin to traditional television, and it's very much American dominated. Is that "not really 'online'" either? Does it need the same manner of regulation that it seems they're looking to impose on Netflix?

So nobody need fear their favourite Netflix show being taken away. This would only affect what users see when they first sit down to watch. That would have a powerful effect. I think it would be enough to keep Canadian shows going so that Canadian culture can be maintained in a distinct form.

If you look at these kinds situations through a purely economic lens, you won't be able to even identify cultural imperialism where it's quite obviously occurring.

Except it really isn't. Netflix (at least in Europe) has shows and movies from all over the world. Thanks to Netflix I've discovered shows from all over the place and I'd venture that less than 50% of my Netflix viewing is "Americana".

That just literally is the definition of cultural imperialism. If imperialism involves rule by violence, it’s just imperialism, and doesn’t take much culture.

I have no idea if a McDonalds on every street corner is actually bad. As every single commenter in this thread independently discovered, people are free to make these decisions, and sometimes there is a reason why a local speciality stayed local.

But you should really tackle the actual argument being made.

Of course, it's not a very good argument for persuading the general public as most people don't know what cultural imperialism means.

The CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) requires that 55% of content broadcasted yearly be of Canadian origin. This just seems like the starting stage of trying to regulate online content in the same manner.