An alliterated update: CRTC, C-470 and CETA

CCA Bul­letin 10/11

March 21, 2011

 

Just the Facts

CRTC —

On March 7, the Cana­dian Radio-television and Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion (CRTC) approved BCE’s acqui­si­tion of CTV­globe­me­dia (CTVgm) and laid out the ben­e­fits pack­age and con­di­tions linked to its approval. In its sub­mis­sion to the con­sul­ta­tion on the sale of CTVgm to BCE, the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA) had 1) asked for a robust pub­lic ben­e­fits pack­age for Cana­di­ans com­men­su­rate with the mag­ni­tude of the trans­ac­tion; 2) raised con­cerns about the ver­ti­cal inte­gra­tion of Cana­dian broad­cast­ing and multi-platform dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­nies, which puts the lat­ter in the driver’s seat. More below…

Bill C-470

(char­i­ta­ble sta­tus) is head­ing for sec­ond read­ing in the Sen­ate today. It may reach Royal Assent before the writ drops… if an elec­tion is called at all! More below…

CETA

nego­ti­a­tions are pro­gress­ing but at a slower pace. The next round is set to take place in Ottawa on April 11. More below…

 

Tell me more

CRTC —

Accord­ing to CRTC pol­icy for own­er­ship trans­ac­tions in the broad­cast­ing sec­tor, the buyer is required to make spe­cific com­mit­ments to fund ini­tia­tives that will improve the broad­cast­ing sys­tem and be of ben­e­fit to Cana­di­ans. Ini­tially, Bell argued that it was already assessed the tangible-benefits fee when it first bought CTV in 2000, and should not have to pay any more. This did not sit well with a num­ber of inter­ven­ers – or even with the CRTC — and Bell had to move from its ini­tial position.

Fur­ther to a review of the pro­posed ben­e­fits pack­age, the CRTC requires BCE to spend $245 mil­lion over the next seven years to:

• allow for the car­riage of at least 43 addi­tional tele­vi­sion ser­vices, includ­ing local and regional con­ven­tional sta­tions and inde­pen­dent com­mu­nity sta­tions ($60 million);
• com­mis­sion inde­pen­dently pro­duced pro­grams of national inter­est (drama and com­edy series, doc­u­men­taries and shows that pro­mote Cana­dian cul­ture) ($100 million);
• enhance local news pro­gram­ming in Win­nipeg, Regina, Saska­toon, Edmon­ton, Cal­gary and Van­cou­ver  ($28.8 million);
• sus­tain the A-Channel sta­tions for at least three years, start­ing on Sep­tem­ber 1, 2011 ($30 million);
• improve the acces­si­bil­ity of the Cana­dian broad­cast­ing sys­tem through an inde­pen­dent fund of $5.7 million;
• sup­port the devel­op­ment of Cana­dian musi­cal and spoken-word tal­ent ($17.5 million);and
• cre­ate an inde­pen­dent fund to help pay the costs of public-interest groups that par­tic­i­pate in the CRTC’s broad­cast­ing proceedings($3 million)

All in all, $140 mil­lion will go towards the pro­duc­tion of new radio and tele­vi­sion pro­gram­ming over the next seven years. Many have crit­i­cized the Com­mis­sion for buy­ing into Bell’s sug­ges­tions and allow­ing it to ded­i­cate a good part of the ben­e­fits pack­age to expenses that should actu­ally be included in the cost of doing busi­ness (e.g. the $60 mil­lion to allow for the car­riage of more tele­vi­sion sta­tions on ExpressVu).

Regard­ing

ver­ti­cal integration

, the CRTC has imposed a mora­to­rium on BCE until the close of its pro­ceed­ing on ver­ti­cal inte­gra­tion. BCE will not be able to enter into new exclu­sive agree­ments that would pre­vent it from mak­ing the rights to its tele­vi­sion pro­gram­ming avail­able to com­peti­tors for broad­cast on mobile devices and over the Inter­net. The CRTC also expressed its firm expec­ta­tion that other inte­grated com­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­nies will abide by this mora­to­rium as well.

C-470–

On March 8, the House of Com­mons passed the third read­ing of

Bill C-470

, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (revo­ca­tion of reg­is­tra­tion), intro­duced by the Hon. Albina Guarnieri (Mis­sis­sauga East — Cooksville)

.

The bill is sched­uled for sec­ond read­ing in the Sen­ate today and it may reach Royal Assent before the writ drops for the much spec­u­lated fed­eral election.

As noted in Bul­letin 30/10, this pri­vate member’s bill ini­tially allowed the Min­is­ter of National Rev­enue to dereg­is­ter any char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion, pub­lic foun­da­tion or pri­vate foun­da­tion grant­ing any employee $250,000 or more in total com­pen­sa­tion. This would have put an unprece­dented com­pen­sa­tion cap on char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions and foun­da­tions which caused reac­tions across the coun­try. In its orig­i­nal form, C-470 would also have allowed the min­is­ter to pub­lish the names and com­pen­sa­tion details of a char­i­ta­ble organization’s or a foundation’s five high­est earn­ing employ­ees, regard­less of their com­pen­sa­tion level or of the pro­por­tion of rev­enue of the orga­ni­za­tion derived from char­i­ta­ble dona­tions. The CCA along with mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions and Imag­ine Canada sub­mit­ted briefs out­lin­ing the dam­ag­ing effects the bill, in its orig­i­nal form, would have had on civil soci­ety in Canada.

C-470 was changed fol­low­ing study at the com­mit­tee level and the tabling of amend­ments from Ms. Guarneri her­self. The amended bill that passed the third read­ing in the House removed the pro­posed com­pen­sa­tion cap for employ­ees of not-for-profit orga­ni­za­tions, and put a floor of $100,000 on the pub­lic dis­clo­sure of indi­vid­ual compensation.

CETA

- The Canada-EU trade nego­ti­a­tions (CETA) con­tinue to progress at a slower pace and are a bit behind the ambi­tious sched­ule orig­i­nally set by the par­ties involved. The sixth round of nego­ti­a­tions took place in Brus­sels in Jan­u­ary, with 46 rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Provinces attend­ing along­side fed­eral nego­tia­tors. The par­ties are hope­ful to exchange their final offers by the end of March. Eight of the 22 chap­ters are com­pleted (includ­ing elec­tronic com­merce and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions).  Accord­ing to Euro­pean sources, there remain con­cerns about Cana­dian copy­right law and the progress of Bill C-32, an issue fol­lowed closely by both the EU and its mem­ber coun­tries and the US gov­ern­ment. Also, we have been told that it will be quite dif­fi­cult for Canada to defend its poli­cies con­cern­ing the lim­i­ta­tion of own­er­ship in telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions. The sev­enth round of nego­ti­a­tions starts in Ottawa on April 11.

A recently pub­lished report titled: Report from the Com­mis­sion to the Euro­pean Coun­cil, Trade and Invest­ment Bar­ri­ers Report 2011 — Engag­ing our strate­gic eco­nomic part­ners on improved mar­ket access: Pri­or­i­ties for action on break­ing down bar­ri­ers to trade describes bar­ri­ers that exist with strate­gic trade part­ners includ­ing China, India, Japan, Argentina, Brazil, Rus­sia and the United States. Inter­est­ingly enough, there is no men­tion of Canada in the report with regards to trade nego­ti­a­tions or any strate­gic partnerships!

The CCA con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor the nego­ti­a­tions and attend brief­ings by trade nego­tia­tors at the Depart­ment of For­eign Affairs and Inter­na­tional Trade Canada. We will con­tinue to push for trans­parency on dis­cus­sions sur­round­ing cul­tural issues.