Pierre Karl Péladeau is perhaps the most divisive figure in Quebec’s already fractured cultural, political and business landscape. The businessman and erstwhile politician (he was leader of the Parti Québécois for what felt like 10 minutes in 2015) casts a long shadow over the province.

As CEO of Quebecor, Péladeau oversees a media juggernaut. His leadership style — all sharp elbows and micromanaged attention — has long earned respect and derision in roughly equal helpings. People either hate or admire him. Many are beholden to his power and fortune.

So it speaks volumes that Péladeau has managed to unite with some of his bitterest enemies (and the occasional ally) in a volley against the federal government — specifically Canadian Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly. This group of 100 odd bedfellows is furious about the wide berth being given to Netflix in the government’s ‘Creative Canada’ strategy.

Netflix isn’t compelled to collect tax from its Canadian customers, while other such streaming services doing business in Canada are already doing so. More egregious still is the fact that there is no government-enforced earmark for French language content in that $500 million Netflix has vowed to spend on Canadian programming. The largely unspoken proxy of this argument, muttered in Quebec’s cloistered artistic milieu, is that the federal government is outsourcing its cultural identity to a California-based content behemoth for the lowly price of $500 million over five years — an investment Netflix might have made anyway.

Not long ago, this sort of anger emanating from Quebec would have sounded the death knell for a federal government. The artistic community in Quebec looms large; it’s rooted in the province’s sovereignty movement and has a ready bullhorn in the province’s media. Until 2011, it also had an eager partner in the Bloc Québécois, which would harvest and distill its animus for political benefit. This artistic-media-political offensive would serve to remind Quebecers of just how different they are from the rest of the country.

Péladeau’s Netflix kvetching reeks of self-interest. And Joly has been able to foist her Creative Canada project on Quebec simply because the province’s political clout has diminished. Péladeau’s Netflix kvetching reeks of self-interest. And Joly has been able to foist her Creative Canada project on Quebec simply because the province’s political clout has diminished.

Perhaps the best example of the damage this could inflict on a government occurred during the 2008 federal election campaign. Until a few weeks before that fall election, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was on track to win a majority government by way of massive support in Quebec. For Quebec separatists, it was an unthinkable situation: an Alberta-bred populist politician with social conservative tendencies (and a decidedly shaky grasp of the French language) could win Quebec’s hinterland.

And then Harper opened his mouth. Specifically, he said exactly what you’d expect from an Alberta-bred populist politician: he announced a $45 million cut to federal arts grants. “Ordinary people understand we have to live within a budget,” he said. Quebec’s media amplified the howls from its cultural elite, and the Bloc Québécois went to work. Harper’s Quebec support plummeted and he failed again to win a Conservative majority in Parliament. Essentially, he bought himself $45 million worth of bad press.

Much has changed in the ten years since. A boom in the largely unregulated delivery of what used to be the purview of a highly regulated industry — television — has made it impossible for governments and businesses to ignore the Netflixes and Amazons of the world. For the same reason, the decline of broadcast television has meant fresh hell for the Canadian Media Fund, which draws its funding from the diminishing returns of those very broadcasters.

Politically speaking, the change has been just as profound. With Creative Canada, the federal government has virtually ignored the Quebec fact, as well as its dominance in the field of cultural production. Creative Canada seems geared towards Toronto and Vancouver, not Montreal. The Liberal party circa 2008 would have railed against such an affront to Quebec, as it did when Harper was at the helm. But while she has telegraphed the possibility of taxing Netflix, Joly has remained firm on the precepts of Creative Canada — Quebec be damned.

So what has changed? Péladeau, for one. After years of purposeful ambiguity, the Quebecor CEO flew out of the closet as an unalloyed separatist in 2014. As such, the federal government has far less motivation to curry favour with him or his myriad media holdings. As well, Péladeau’s Netflix kvetching reeks of self-interest. He owns Illico, the province’s largest streaming service and one of Netflix’s competitors in Quebec. He also owns internet provider Videotron, which has had to invest heavily in infrastructure to deliver the likes of Netflix to its customers.

Joly has been able to foist her Creative Canada project on Quebec simply because the province’s political clout has diminished. With all of 10 MPs, the Bloc Québécois hovers between rump and non-entity status. Three years after suffering its worst political defeat in four decades, the Parti Québécois remains locked in the basement of public opinion.

Finally, a mere seven years after being virtually shut out from the province, the fortunes of Liberal Party of Canada in Quebec are almost absurdly bright. The party recently won a byelection in the Saguenay region, where federalists are almost as rare as anglos. Two years after his election, Justin Trudeau remains far and away the most popular federal leader in the province. His opposition, meanwhile, consists of a Saskatchewanian with broken French and a guy who wears a turban.

In short, Quebecers seem to love the Liberals again. No wonder the party is so willing to ignore them.

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