THE BROADCAST AND TELECOM Legislative Review panel has received some 2,000 interventions and they had decided to make them public.
The news release on September 24th read “These written submissions will be publicly available after the deadline for submissions on November 30, 2018.”
That was before it was decided the deadline for those submissions would be pushed to Friday, January 11th. However, they won’t yet be made public. In fact, it won’t be for a while. “These inputs will form the backbone of the panel's What We've Heard Report which will be published no later than June 30th. At that time, all written submissions will also be posted on the panel's website,” said a spokesperson in an email.
The reason given to Cartt.ca was: “The Panel wants to take time to read, review, and digest the submissions, and has indicated that the submissions will be made public when it releases their What We’ve Heard Report,” in June.
(Ed note: Technically, June is “after” the deadline…)
But we digress. While the panel digests and our subscribers are starving (CRTC staff is even asking Cartt.ca to share the submissions it has), Cartt.ca is continuing the reporting on interested parties that shared their papers with us. A warm thank you to the 29 who have sent theirs in.
Internet Society, Canadian Chapter
“In the broadcasting context, the greatest competitors to the incumbent broadcasting system are found in the applications that run over the internet rather than the internet itself,” starts the submission from the group which advocates for affordable, fair and secure internet access for Canadians. Click here to read more about the organization.
“The Panel should always be guided in its deliberations by two fundamental considerations. First, a new legislative framework should be constructed from an internet-centric viewpoint. Second — necessary to achieve the first — is to recognize the very different reasons for the regulation of telecommunications and broadcasting,” it continues.
“The internet is neither a traditional telecommunications service nor is it broadcasting.” – Internet Society, Canadian chapter
Try to remember that Konrad von Finckenstein is a member of the Internet Society when you read: “The internet is neither a traditional telecommunications service nor is it broadcasting.”
“There is no doubt that the internet has disrupted and transformed both traditional telecommunications and broadcasting. But those who suggest that the internet is a ‘convergence’ of these two legacy industries miss the point. They conflate the internet, with one small technological side-effect of its vast, economic, social and, yes, cultural impact,” the Society’s pitch continues.
“To be clear: that does not mean the end of measures to promote and support Canadian content. What it means is that, rather than seeking to ‘harness’ online media as has been done with broadcast media, Canadian content policy needs to focus on measures that unleash and incentivize the great potential demonstrated by Canadian creators, artists and producers to seize the opportunities that the internet presents.”
A bit of a rebuttal of CRTC’s Harnessing Change report, perhaps?
Going against the consensus, “ISCC believes that, as a matter of legality, it is incorrect that the Broadcasting Act gives the CRTC jurisdiction over audio-visual content on the internet, let alone over the undertakings that provide that content. ISCC further believes that sound policy dictates that the CRTC should not be permitted to attempt such regulation, and any new Broadcasting Act should make that explicit.
“ISCC believes that the CRTC has handled the issue of net neutrality well,” the submission adds.
One could read this as something of a settling of old scores where the submission says “the premises that dictated the combination of telecommunications and broadcasting under one regulator in the 1960’s has proven both false and costly. The use of the term ‘convergence’ persists beyond any usefulness. The internet has not resulted in the merger of broadcasting with telecommunications but rather the opposite: broadcasting is now merely one application among many communicated over the internet using the carriage services provided by telecommunications common carriers. Cable television systems have resolved into two-way carriers – on which broadcasting is again but one application.”
As well, the ISCC pitch says telecom is too important to be left to generalists like the CRTC and so there should be two regulators: one for telecom and another for broadcasting.
Finally, they propose: “Should the telecommunications regulator be a law enforcement agency? There has been mandate creep associated with the Unsolicited Telecommunications provisions of the Telecommunications Act (section 40 ), the Do Not Call provisions (ss.41.1 – 41.5), and especially the administration and enforcement of the core provisions of what is popularly called Canada’s Anti-spam Legislation (CASL).”
Many agree with this.
The well-known University of Ottawa professor and pundit (and all around irritant to the major telecom and TV industry players) starts his own submission by stating that: “In a world in which Internet access is the gateway to communications, culture, commerce, education, and community participation, the single most important policy goal of communications legislation is universal, affordable Internet access.” All else is secondary.
“The Internet is not the equivalent of the broadcasting system and efforts to cast it as such for regulatory purposes are enormously problematic. Indeed, this submission argues that the panel should recognize the importance of regulatory humility as a fundamental principle, guided by the view that communications law should not be used as a regulatory mechanism when other, more appropriate regulatory or legal tools are available nor should it be relied upon as a critical funding mechanism to support other policy objectives,” he adds.
Regulatory humility is a welcome concept opposed to mandate creep we have witnessed in the last decades.
" Rather than expanding the cross-subsidization approach, however, the panel should recommend its gradual elimination." – Michael Geist
“Cultural cross-subsidization has been a hallmark of the Canadian communications system, with mandated contributions from broadcasters and broadcast distributors (BDUs) used to support the creation of Cancon. Rather than expanding the cross-subsidization approach, however, the panel should recommend its gradual elimination,” he argues.
“Rather, public support such as grants, tax benefits, and other measures should come from general revenues as a matter of public policy, not through cross-subsidization, “ he says adding that it goes against his first principle: universal, affordable Internet access.
Competitiveness in the broadcasting sector is important, so he recommends “several reforms that would help solidify the competitiveness of the sector. These include the removal of foreign ownership restrictions, enhancing consumer choice, the gradual elimination of simultaneous substitution, and limitations on the CBC’s acceptance of digital advertising to decrease overlap with the private sector advertising-based models.”
As well, “U.S. broadcasters – which provide a better analogy to U.S.-based Netflix as a broadcaster – face no such requirements, having never been subject to Cancon requirements despite their near-universal availability in Canada.”
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We will have more to come as we continue to read and analyze the now 31 submissions we have received after asking the companies or groups. Those who have told us no, we’re not sending our submission? Bell Canada, Corus Entertainment and SaskTel. Those from whom we haven’t yet heard an answer? Facebook, Amazon and Netflix. Those whose submissions we’re still reading? CMPA, Google, Pelmorex, ACTRA, Iristel, SSi Micro and a few others.
Click here and then here for the prior two stories we've published on the submissions. We also did separate stories on the CRTC and CBC submissions.
We also intend to break down the submissions in more detail by the issues, and not just by companies/organizations, in the coming weeks. Please email us directly if you have any story ideas or angles you think we should be pursuing on this topic. Your email will be kept confidential.
Original artwork by Paul Lachine, Chatham, Ont.
