OTTAWA – Today in Ottawa during his first official speech to an industry group, new CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein set the tone for his five-year mandate and confirmed that the CRTC under him will continue to pursue deregulation as desired by the federal government.
However, one could say that during his breakfast address to Prime Time, the Canadian Film and Television Producers’ Association annual conference, he pushed back a little bit in the other direction, warning of the dangers of "untimely deregulation."
"Make no mistake: less regulation in telecom has and will continue to be the Commission’s prime objective," reads the text of his speech, from which he deviated quite a with a rather unfussy, droll presentation style.
"The government has made it clear they wish to do this as fast as possible," he continued. However, he added, "excessive and untimely deregulation can end up stifling rather than stimulating competition."
Von Finckenstein identified four pillars of his approach to regulation: transparency, fairness, predictability and timeliness. "They are absolutely the key to good regulation," he said. "The Regulator has to be consistent."
Straying from the speech, he added: "Time in Ottawa has no value. Here it is in ever-expanding quantity. But to your businesses, delay costs real dollars."
Besides telecom regulation, the chair outlined three additional challenges facing the CRTC that he wants to address during his five-year mandate: the myriad issues facing broadcasting, the internal challenge of Commission employee turnover and "finding the right mix."
He pointed to the various sessions at the conference such as user generated content rendering producers immaterial, on demand content neutering conventional broadcasters and rights questions in the new media world. "What does this mean to the regulatory system?" he asked.
Inside the Commission, von Finckenstein warned of departing baby-boomer aged employees taking years of experience with them as they go and insisted the CRTC must develop its younger work force, or risk becoming irrelevant.
He concluded with the final challenge of finding the right mix of regulation and market forces. "Market forces are driven by economic objectives," he said. "They don’t put any value on culture per se… that’s why we have a regulator."
