Changing the Channel on Canadian Communications Regulation

Canada’s communications and broadcasting world has changed dramatically in recent decades. And more changes are coming. But our communications and broadcasting statutes and regulations have not kept pace. Technology changes have enabled new services like Netflix that are changing fundamentally how Canadians watch TV. Various technologies now provide broadband access to a worldwide ocean of Internet content, with different wireless and wireline platforms competing for subscribers. Yet Canadian regulation of the communications sector still rests on a model born in an earlier era of over-the-air television broadcasting and technological constraints that inhibited competition among communications carriers. A recently announced federal government review of Canadian communications and broadcasting policies should ask specific questions about current policies: Does the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication’s (CRTC’s) regulatory approach intensify competition or merely help individual companies or interest groups? Does the framework for mandating access to essential facilities encourage investment in innovative communications technologies? What, if anything, should the federal government do to put Canadian broadcasters on a level playing field with international competitors? What role, if any, should Ottawa play to ensure that Canadians have a choice of compelling TV viewing options that tell Canadian stories? This Commentary argues that the federal government review of broadcasting and communications policy should conclude that: • Ottawa should construct a unified policy framework for the Broadcasting Act and the Telecommunications Act that recognizes the convergence in conduits for accessing and delivering content; • Ottawa should eliminate the CRTC’s responsibility for Canadian cultural promotion and mandate the Department of Canadian Heritage to assume the role of articulating a policy framework for Canadian content; • To finance Canadian content, government should not impose specific taxes on broadcasters, broadband providers or on content streamed via broadband, such as Netflix. Instead, Ottawa should support Canadian content production directly from general revenues. The federal government should also eliminate exhibition quotas for Canadian TV programming and replace them with subsidies or tax preferences for connecting Canadian audiences to Canadian content; • The CRTC should face more economic and legal rigour in its hearings and defer to the Competition Bureau in countering specific anti-competitive conduct, protecting consumers and reviewing mergers; and • Rather than support new entrants in spectrum auctions, the federal government should eliminate foreign ownership restrictions on Canadian communications companies and maximize the public benefits from the use of spectrum but defer to the Competition Bureau to counter anti-competitive conduct in spectrum acquisition. These reforms would fundamentally change how Ottawa regulates Canadian broadcasting and communication. It is time for federal broadcasting and communications policy to keep pace with changing technology.