There's a few things that are wrong with your rant.
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Rogers, Bell, Shaw, Cogeco & Videotron were ordered by the CRTC to provide content online to their customers in order to offer a means for supplying Canadian content via the internet. This wasn't just a hairbrained scheme to make money, they were mandated to do so.
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It was Rogers/Shaw and Bell(CTV) who chose to monetize the mandate. As always, they did the absolute minimum, and got the absolute minimum of support for the product.
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Content laws in Canada require that a certain percentage of Canadian produced content must be made available on all mediums, this is why the services lacked anything substantial. But isn't the whole problems.
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On top of this, Netflix has spent billions negotiating content permissions for both the US and Canadian market, and the copyright holders determine what is available, not the broadcasters (the big five, Netflix, etc.) This is why AMC, HBO and TMC have occasional blackouts in Canada, because the broadcaster isn't licensed to show the content here.
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Granted that our selections may be different than Netflix US, we have almost as much content as the US version, if not more. The difference is the fact that we don't have access to HBO/AMC/etc content the same as the US does. I regularily use Netflix CA and have only found a few cases where the content I want to watch isn't available. ie: Universal content such as Back to the Future, etc.
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As someone who has spent 10 years working in television broadcast, none of these issues are any different from the US or Canada, or have changed in the past 30+ years. It has always been up to the copyright holder (usually the distribution company) to determine what can and cannot be shown in a market. As much as I detest the big five, there is nothing they can do in this regards.
If you want to effect change in this area, then it's up to us, as consumers to speak to our MPs, senators, other government representatives and have the old laws - which were created by previous protectionist governments on both sides of the border - repealed. The problem isn't entirely the broadcasters, but the antiquated laws they are confined to, and on top of it, the fact that they wear too many hats. (Rogers, Shaw, Bell all are content producers, content broadcasters, and content providers - ie: ISPs & cable/satellite operators)