Canada: Communications: Conservative government wants to revamp state and free-enterprise communications across the continent

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Toronto's Globe & Mail carries an important article by Simon Tuck, entitled "Conservatives set to mould altered CRTC (Jan14,2k7). That's the Canadian Radio Tevelvision Commission which, among other things regulates the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), an English language service, and the French language service Radio Canada. These are the principle means of ideological transmission of the left-Liberal/NDP
worldview in which opinon-making marinates itself in statist Canada. These are also the chief enemies of free-enterprise broadcasting, which has besetting problems of its own in Canada. But the needed inner reformation of f-e broadcasters does not offset the even more drastic necessity of reforminfg the CRTC, CBC, RC, and certain practices of pay-for cable TV carriers like Rogers (which owns the cable TV district I live in, thankyou, CRTC).

The Harper government will attempt to fill as many as seven seats on the 13-member Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission — including the chair — in the next year, and industry officials say the Conservatives are likely to reshape the regulator with appointees who take a more market-oriented view.

Some government and industry officials are suggesting that the Conservatives will also use the openings to add different types of people to the commission — perhaps a consumer advocate or small-business owner — instead of filling it with more veterans of the telecommunications and broadcast sectors.

Some Conservatives, including Industry Minister Maxime Bernier, believe the commission is too close to the two sectors it regulates, and that previous commissioners have been appointed largely because of their experience in at least one of those industries.

“Harper won't call central casting for this,” said one industry official who follows the CRTC closely.

Seats on the commission are considered plum posts because they can pay more than $135,000 a year for up to five years and don't attract great scrutiny.

In filling the vacancies, the government will consider traits such as gender, race, ethnicity, language and region, similar to constructing a mini-cabinet. In the past, six of the seats have been reserved for each of the country's main regions, with about half of the commission coming from each of the two sectors.

But that could all change.

The chair's job came open at the start of the year and the Prime Minister's Office has already rejected the two leading candidates — Fernand Bélisle, a former CRTC vice-chairman of broadcasting, and George Addy, a former Telus Corp. executive who was once head of the federal competition watchdog — because, it is widely believed, each was considered too much of an insider who would be unlikely to lead an overhaul.

Sources say the government is also looking for outsider candidates to fill the two existing commissioner vacancies, but a government official said finding non-insiders who have adequate expertise isn't easy.

North America > Canada

The Conservatives would also like to use the CRTC appointments to change the commission's view of its role, particularly toward the broadcast sector. Mr. Bernier was able to force the commission last year to take a more market-oriented approach toward the telecom sector, but changing the regulator's role in thorny broadcast issues such as Canadian content would be much more politically dangerous. With a minority government, overhauling broadcast legislation is considered highly unlikely.

Many in the broadcast and telecom industries, meanwhile, are concerned that the government will weaken the CRTC by appointing people who simply lack the background to do a good job.

“It's supposed to be a body with specialized expertise,” a broadcast executive said.

Established in 1968 to regulate broadcasters, the CRTC is widely credited with helping foster the domestic television and radio industries, as well as the artists and others who create content.

David McKendry, a consultant who once sat on the CRTC, said the commissioners' role shouldn't be taken lightly. “I think it's very important — we're talking about Canadian culture.”

With seven of the commission's 13 seats either already vacant or scheduled to become so by the middle of November, the expected change in direction comes at an important time. The commission is poised to weigh such tough issues as foreign ownership of a major broadcaster. Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc. agreed last week to be sold to CanWest Global Communications Corp. and U.S.-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for a proposed $2.3-billion.

The CRTC is also trying to rebound from one of its most difficult periods and prove that it's still relevant in the digital age. Key industry voices and many analysts have said in recent months that the commission is having difficulty adapting to a world where technology has left national borders more porous. The commission has also had to contend with the introduction of Internet-based telephones, satellite radio, and the emergence of foreign-based broadcasters such as Rai and Al-Jazeera.

A spokesman for Heritage Minister Bev Oda wouldn't comment Friday on the CRTC vacancies.

I've been waiting for Bev Oda to make her move, waiting ever since she was appointed to the Ministery, a ministry whose very name exposes just how much CBC/RC is a statist enterprise. But even more, it's obvious that placing the entirety of the programs and fields under CRTC admin, the entire mixed-bag dumped idiotically into the single category of "Heritage" -- obviously all that is ideologically motivated.

What the very name tells us , first of all, is that there is in Canada actually no general Communications Ministry, a telltale fact that illuminates both the technically retrograde mindsets of the CRTC political appointees -- these all being drawn from the ranks former CBC/RC employees and their supporting bureaucracy -- and a blockage point thru-out the previous federal governments in regard to the development of a ministry effectively grappling with the implications of the rapid advance in all sorts of means of communications via the airwaves and satellites, mobile phones and traditional phones. Traditional phones?--don't get me started. I live in the miserable demi-world where your own name can be put on a commercial list for annoyance calls to y0u, against your will, courtesy of Bell Canada and a business practice approved by the CRTC--unless you double-pay your own way out!

The CRTC package is the dirty little secret behind the "Heritage" concept as the left-Libs handed it down in their dynastic self-replacements (replacements arranged not least of all by scams and scandals). But a misnomered "Heritage Ministry" is what we've got. If we are to retain a statist broadcast system, then, at least let it be devoted to the many heritages of Canada, a history and ethnomosaic broadcasting system perhaps still maintained at federal state expense.

But many other initiatives toward a genuine pluralism of the governing and the regulation of communications according to the principle of public-legal justce for all (worldviews) is an urgent requirement of our day in Canada.

--Politicarp

More Info:

CRTC
Wikipedia article on CRTC