More Canadians re-evaluating streaming services as subscriptions mount, poll suggests

TORONTO – A new poll sheds light on how Canadians are paying for TV in an era with more streaming options and generally higher price tags.

The survey from the Angus Reid Institute suggests more Canadians are cancelling their streaming subscriptions now than they were four years ago — though in that time, the number of services many people pay for also went up.

The poll indicates that more than a quarter of Canadians subscribe to four or more streaming services, compared to 17 per cent in 2022.

Meanwhile, the poll suggests the number of Canadians who have cancelled at least one subscription in the last six months has increased from 32 to 37 per cent.

And it says the number of respondents who cancelled more than one subscription more than doubled, from eight to 17 per cent.

Two thirds of respondents who had cancelled a streaming subscription said it was because it was too expensive, while 32 per cent said they were no longer using it.

The Angus Reid Institute surveyed 1,806 Canadian adults online from Oct. 19 to 22, and 84 per cent said they subscribed to at least one streaming service.

The Canadian Research Insights Council, an industry organization that promotes polling standards, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.

The most popular streaming services were Prime Video and Netflix, which 62 per cent and 60 per cent of all those surveyed said they subscribe to. After that were Disney Plus with 30 per cent and Crave with 29 per cent.

The streaming landscape has broadened significantly since Netflix launched in Canada in 2010. More recent additions include Paramount Plus in 2021, Pluto TV (a free ad-supported streaming service) in 2022, and the conversion of CityTV Plus from an add-on channel on Prime to a standalone streaming service in 2025.

Even the online streaming guide JustWatch, meant to helps viewers keep track of what platforms carry the shows they’re interested in, last month launched its own streaming service in Canada. 

The survey also looked at Canadians’ traditional cable subscriptions, and suggested they’re still on the decline.

The poll indicates about half of Canadians subscribe to cable or satellite TV, down from 71 per cent in 2018 and 88 per cent in 2012.

Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, said it’s something of a conundrum.

“We’re seeing Canadians experiencing two things concurrently. One, that they’re less satisfied with the streaming experience. And secondly, that they are finding … the value is just not good anymore,” she said by phone. 

Some streaming services now offer lower-cost ad-supported options, but even those rates are higher than the ad-free subscriptions were in the past, she said.

“It’s not unusual to have the streaming company say, ‘Oh well why don’t you subscribe annually, we’ll give you a break,’ and you start to really add up the cost of how much all of this is and it can be quite jarring,” she said.

“But at the same time, technology has put us on this trajectory where, despite that, it’s not like we’re seeing a stampede back to cable.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2026.