CALGARY and OTTAWA – Shaw Communications CEO Jim Shaw told Prime Minister Stephen Harper in a letter yesterday that the CRTC is bent on derailing the conservative government’s goals.
The five-page letter date April 16th, which was also sent to Industry Minister Jim Prentice, Heritage Minister Josee Verner and CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein, first outlines Shaw’s broad support for the government’s deregulation thrust on the telecom front and then decries the actions, or lack of action, Mr. Shaw feels is happening on the broadcasting and cable file.
“(W)e were the only broadcast distributor to support your Government’s move forward with forbearance in telecom regulation,” reads the letter. “We have supported the Government’s Competition Policy Review Panel and recommended streamlined regulation, a focus on consumers, and the elimination of subsidies to foster a competitive, knowledge-based economy.”
The CEO points out his company has invested billions in the Canadian economy, including $700 million coming this year alone in network improvements and the $400 million it has committed to for the advanced wireless spectrum auction coming next month.
“Unfortunately, the Government’s objectives of driving innovation, investment and fair competition for the benefit of Canadians, and Shaw’s efforts to help realize them, are being undermined by the CRTC’s current review of cable and satellite broadcasting regulations,” writes Shaw to the PM.
“We need you to ensure that this does not occur.”
Noting the speech made by Minister Verner at the Canadian Association of Broadcasters convention in November, Shaw emphasized the minister then spoke of market forces being allowed to drive the industry which will, in turn, cause lighter regulation that will be flexible and “readily adaptable to technical change and does not inhibit the development of information technologies,” reads the letter.
Shaw also decried the Commission’s re-investigation of fee-for-carriage for conventional broadcasters, less than a year after its new OTA policy decision dismissed the idea due to lack of evidence. So far the hearing going on now in Gatineau, which Cartt.ca has covered daily, has had a heavy focus on FFC (where conventional broadcasters would receive a subscription fee from cable, satellite and telco TV customers).
“The CRTC hearings have turned into a debate about whether cable and satellite customers should be taxed to pay for the mismanagement, folly and expansionary dreams of broadcast executives who demand more money from us and our customers while investing their money in buying U.S. programming and increasing their broadcasting assets – assets they say are not performing and need further subsidy,” writes Shaw.
Shaw also pointed to the length of time it’s taken to sort out the Canadian Television Fund as an ongoing irritant, too. “Shaw Communications raised serious concerns about the CTF two years ago. Since then, we have had an internal CRTC task force, a lengthy period of external consultation, an inconclusive CRTC report leading nowhere, a CRTC hearing to allow further debate; all resulting in nothing,” says the letter.
Shaw recognized that Minister Verner has taken control of the file and expressed hope for “serious decisions” on the CTF.
The Calgary company`s leadership clearly doesn`t like the overall tone of the hearing thus far (let`s take an educated guess Shaw isn`t a big fan of commissioner Michel Morin`s proposed points scheme) and this letter is a direct appeal to the PMO to provide some sort of direction to the CRTC, which Shaw describes as ”a headstrong regulatory authority, pursuing its own agenda.
”Instead of focusing on meeting customer preferences for open access to programming, cutting subsidies that reward broadcasters for the wrong behaviour, removing restrictions on programming and cutting onerous bureaucratic rules that limit customer choice – all of which are realistic and reasonable doorways to the future, we are forced again to look backwards to the past,” continued Shaw in his letter.
”The CRTC review does not mark a movement toward a light at the end of the tunnel, but rather a fumbling toward deepening darkness.”
Shaw also took a swipe at the Commission`s impending ”misguided” review of new media, he wrote.
”The CRTC`s historic approach to cable as a mere instrument to promote Canadian content is outdated. Cable, in competition with the telcos, is building Canada`s information superhighway and our telecom and broadcasting policies should encourage not hinder this development,” the letter adds.
”What is really needed are not more subsidies and micro-regulation by the CRTC, but rather a made-in-Canada broadband policy.”
Shaw Communications appears in front of the Commission next Wednesday.
