CCA Bulletin 18/06

Telecommunications Policy Review Panel Final Report: Time for global thinking, not tinkering!

The Telecommunications Policy Review Panel issued its final report recently and the Canadian Conference of the Arts (CCA) has been sifting through the 369 page tome in order to discern what its recommendations bode for the future of Canadian cultural sovereignty.

The Panel was examining the rapidly changing telecommunications environment to assess where Canada stands in the telecom “revolution”, and how the country’s current regulatory and legislative instruments adequately address these new realities through government policy objectives. The Panel’s mandate and information about their review, which is available online, also provides links to the full text of the final report.

Key Concerns of the Panel:

The Panel identified some key concerns in the area of telecommunications, which are as follows:

There is a comparative lack of clear policy direction in Canadian laws and other government policy instruments;
There is a lack of clarity and separation between the roles of policy making and regulation;
There is a comparative lack of policy-making, research and analysis capabilities within the government, the regulator, and the sector generally;
Canada has more relatively intrusive, complex, and costly regulation of major telecommunications service providers, with more extensive prior regulatory approval requirements and longer regulatory delays;
The CRTC has insufficient authority and capacity to retain highly qualified staff and consulting expertise, compared with some other regulatory agencies;
There are increasing inconsistencies and tensions among the institutions, policies, laws and regulations governing various parts of the converging telecommunications, broadcasting and internet markets.

Those more versed in cultural policy will nod their heads in agreement with most of these statements as holding true for the arts and culture sector as well. One of the outcomes of the CCA’s March 3-4 2006 National Policy Conference is a call for the development of a coherent cultural policy framework to address some of the dysfunctions that the Panel has identified in the telecommunications field.

The Panel also notes the introduction of new distribution technologies and the emergence of hybrid and bundled service (cable, telephone, internet, wireless etc.) as realities that challenge the current capacities of the telecommunications policies and regulations. It further notes that this field is fiercely competitive internationally and Canada can ill-afford to rest on its laurels from past achievements.

The Afterword section of the Final Report deals with a matter of direct relevance and of vital importance to the cultural sector. Here the Panel addresses the proverbial elephant in the room – the calls that it received from some groups for the harmonization of Canada’s broadcasting and telecommunications policies. The Panel is candid in noting that this issue was not part of its mandate, but given the current environment of competition and convergence, it was impossible for them to ignore the issue entirely.

The Panel characterizes this harmonization issue around questions of, “the implications of the technology and market trends that are transforming the telecommunications industry for Canada’s broadcasting policy and regulatory framework”, as well as, “the current policies that restrict foreign ownership and control of telecommunications common carriers and broadcast distribution undertakings.”

The Panel notes that, “The convergence of telecommunications and broadcasting markets brings into question the continued viability of maintaining two separate policy and regulatory frameworks, one for the telecommunications common carriers like the incumbent telephone companies and one for their competitors in most of the same markets, the cable telecommunications companies.”

The Panel urges the Government of Canada to undertake a review of its broadcasting policies, “to reflect the obvious changes occurring in the broadcasting environment”. Most importantly they remark, “Any substantive changes to broadcasting policies as well as foreign ownership and control restrictions should wait until such a review is completed.”

The Canadian Conference of the Arts (CCA) observed during its recent 2006 federal election analyses that the Conservative Party indicated an interest in reviewing the role of the CBC and the CRTC. This call by the Panel would seem to add some urgency to this process, which must be done from a global perspective and not in a piecemeal fashion.

The CCA maintains that the principle of Canadian ownership and effective domestic control of our cultural industries should be the cornerstones of any broadcasting policy. The increasingly artificial distinction between traditional broadcasters and telecommunications undertakings must be remedied to ensure that all content providers support Canada’s cultural objectives as set out in the Broadcasting Act.

The CCA welcomes the opportunity for a thorough and informed debate on these important questions, and the CCA encourages the Hon. Bev Oda, Minister of Canadian Heritage, to take action to begin this discussion and to ensure, that Canada’s foreign ownership restrictions are maintained and strengthened for the sake of our cultural sovereignty.

Background information:

The report sets the stage for its recommendations by providing an interesting assessment of where Canada is now in terms of telecommunications:

In 2003, the Canadian telecommunications market, as measured by revenue, was the eighth largest in the OECD.
Almost 99% of Canadian households subscribe to a wireline or wireless service, residential wireline telephone service being subscribed to by approximately 96 per cent of Canadian households (as of December 2004).
In 1993, Canada had 85 percent of its access lines digitized (the highest percentage in the OECD) and reached 100 per cent digitization in 1998.
Wireless penetration in Canada ranks second last in the OECD.
Until 2003, Canada ranked second in terms of broadband penetration; by June 2005, Canada ranked sixth.
Canada ranks first in the OECD in terms of cable internet penetration (June 2005). Currently, over 11.1 million Canadian homes – or 93.5 percent of the homes passed by cable – have high-speed internet access available to them, and there are 2.8 million subscribers to the service.
The number of retail internet subscribers in Canada, including dial-up and high speed customers, exceeded 7.4 million in 2004, representing 59 per cent of Canadian households.