AS EXPECTED, FORMER BROADCASTER (TVO and CTV) and CRTC Commissioner, Durham (Ont.) MP Bev Oda, was made Minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women this morning when new Prime Minister Stephen Harper was sworn in and announced his new cabinet.
What wasn’t expected was former Liberal Industry Minister David Emerson crossing the floor to become a Conservative and remain in cabinet and in power as Minister for International Trade.
Beauce (Que.) MP Maxime Bernier, a former Standard Life vice-president, has been named Industry Minister.
Industry and Heritage both oversee the CRTC, the regulatory arbiter of the Canadian cable, radio, television and telecom industry. The Minister of Industry has in the past primarily looked at telecom and business issues while the Minister of Heritage oversaw the cultural aspects.
However, with TV now on cell phones and sold online and telcos offering TV service and cable companies delivering voice – all under one “broadband” umbrella often crossing international borders, one wonders how and if government will be able to maintain such a split going-forward and what changes might be made.
I mean, if government still wants to divide rule over the CRTC and the communications and media industry, telecom could just as easily fall under the Transport, Infrastructure and Communities Ministry, headed up by Pontiac (Que.) MP Lawrence Cannon.
Cannon, after all, was Minister of Communications under Quebec Liberal Premiere Robert Bourassa from 1990-94 and while “infrastructure” is usually roads and sewers and such, most communities have broadband capabilities within their own infrastructure investment priorities.
During this election campaign, none of the parties had much to say about their plans for media, culture, telecom or broadband, but the Conservatives have in the past, made noises about limiting or re-drawing the CRTC’s powers and opening up the broadcast and telecom industries to more foreign competition.
However, with Oda’s long connection to the industry and its traditional functions (like the CTF) and power bases, we’ll just have to wait and see what the new government has in mind for these important industries, because they’re not found in the new Prime Minister Harper’s stated “five key priorities” from this morning.
Those priorities are:
* Cleaning up government by enacting and enforcing the Federal Accountability Act;
* Lowering taxes for working Canadians, starting with a reduction to the Goods and Services Tax;
* Protecting Canadian families and communities by strengthening the justice system;
* Supporting the child care choices of parents; and
* Delivering health care Canadians need, when they need it, by establishing a patient wait times guarantee with the provinces.
Hard to find a TV or telecom angle in any of those. However, the new Accountability Act will have in it a five-year ban on any minister or senior bureaucrat acting a lobbyist to the Government of Canada, which will no doubt affect those who have, in the past, left the CRTC in order to lobby the government on behalf of telecom, broadcast or other cultural organizations.
– Greg O’Brien
