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

CCA Bul­letin 18/06

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.