Amazon.com Inc.’s on-demand video streaming service will go live in Canada on Thursday, Bell Media’s president said during a licence renewal hearing Tuesday.

“Now a new global OTT [over-the-top content] competitor – Amazon Prime is entering the Canadian market in just two days,” said Mary Ann Turcke in her submission to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.

At the hearing, Turcke argued for greater regulatory flexibility to cope with the new challenge.

“So it’s not just our fellow Canadian broadcasters who will try to outbid us for first-run, original programming,” Turcke said, “but it’s Netflix and now Amazon, two entities that are not subject to the same regulatory requirements as us and that have astronomically more buying power than we do.”

Netflix has been granted a new media exemption that means it pays minimal tax on an estimated $600 million in annual revenue from subscribers in Canada.

Unlike licensed over-the-air distributors including Bell, Netflix is not required to pay into a media fund to support Canadian content, although the company argues that it has made significant investments on its own.

Bell’s streaming service Crave TV has more than one million subscribers versus an estimated 5.2 million Canadian customers for Los Gatos, Calif.-based Netflix.

Shomi, a service launched by Rogers Communications and Shaw, is to shutter on Wednesday, after failing to make inroads against Netflix in the OTT market.

It is not clear if full Amazon Prime Video content will be available. Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.