Conservatives release 83-page electoral platform
By Denis Carmel
The recently announced federal election officially signals the death of Bill C-10.
In dissolving the House of Commons, any “incomplete business is terminated, including government and private members’ bills,” reads the House of Commons website.
This includes Bill C-10, the legislation intended to modernize the Broadcasting Act.
So much work for nothing is distressing but it also illustrates the difficulty of legislating in today’s world, especially with a minority government.
Assuming a new government reintroduces the same bill or a new one, they will have to start from scratch. So those 159 witnesses, 55 briefs tabled, 28 meetings of the Heritage Committee, hundreds of Zoom meetings by lobbyists, associations and experts amount to nothing. It is back to square one.
All parties blame each other but as someone who followed the proceedings closely, I honestly think the Bill was doomed from the start since it tried to copy and paste the structure of the past to a new environment without significantly touching the privileges of various entities who benefited from the old system. Who moved my cheese!
We hope lessons were learned and we have no illusions any proposed legislation will be met with unanimous approval. And most astonishingly, those who would have been mostly impacted by the legislation did not seem to have to exercise visible pressure, the Bill collapsed under its own weight.
And, by the way, someone owes me a beer!
Conservatives release their platform
This morning, the Conservatives released their 83-page electoral platform, which includes a section on broadcasting in the chapter A Detailed Plan to Strengthen Cultural Industries.
“Canada’s Conservatives will repeal Liberal Bill C-10, which gives too much power to regulators while failing to provide businesses with the clear guidelines they need to operate,” the chapter starts. Sorry Mr. O’Toole, but the Liberals have already repealed C-10 by dissolving Parliament…
“We will replace it with legislation that updates the Broadcasting Act to deal with the realities of an increasingly online market and the need to provide businesses with certainty and consumers with choice,” it goes on.
They propose to require large streaming services to contribute to the Canadian broadcasting system and reduce the regulatory burden on conventional Canadian broadcasters and cable companies.
And, of course: “Exempt the content Canadians upload onto social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Tik Tok from regulation in order to protect free speech.”
The Conservatives are also proposing a review of “the mandate of CBC English Television, CBC News Network and CBC English online news to assess the viability of refocusing the service on a public interest model like that of PBS in the United States, ensuring that it no longer competes with private Canadian broadcasters and digital providers,” the platform continues.
On the telecom side, in a chapter called A Detailed Plan to Lower Prices, the Conservatives declare that since “Canadians continue to pay some of the highest prices in the world for accessing the internet — both at home and on their mobile phones,” and since they are suffering because “a few large companies have too much power,” it is “time for a government that takes the side of consumers.”
The only mention of spectrum auctions shows the Conservatives want to speed them up and earmark the revenues generated by them to their Digital Infrastructure Plan.
The NDP, in their summarized commitments are also concerned about phone and Internet rates: “New Democrats believe that no matter where you live in Canada, you should be able to stay connected – without breaking the bank because of unfair gouging. That’s why, until the industry becomes more competitive, we’ll put in place a price cap to make sure that Canadians aren’t paying more than the global average for their cell phone and internet bills.”
