Von Finckenstein calls for expert panel to advise on ‘wholesale legislative reform’

OTTAWA—The federal government should appoint an expert panel to study communications regulatory reform and come up with a roadmap on how to how to proceed on the prickly issue, CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein says. “You need the foundation. Someone has to develop a new concept, a new way to ,” von Finckenstein told The Wire Report following a panel discussion in Ottawa Thursday, titled “Telecom in Canada: A New Owner’s Manual,” hosted by Canada 2020. “The way you normally do it is you appoint a panel of people who are knowledgeable about the industry and give them a clear mandate,” von Finckenstein said. Regulatory reform has become pressing issue as experts debate how to amend, or even merge, what they say are Canada’s outdated telecom and broadcasting policies. In recent weeks, von Finckenstein has repeatedly called for regulatory reform—particularly a new, converged statute covering telecommunications and broadcasting. “By and large, we are still bound by this artificial division. This is not the only thing. We need to not only deal with ownership, but also the whole box of legislation, on telecom, on broadcasting, on radiocommunication—or spectrum. Those policies are now in the one area of convergence,” von Finckenstein said during Thursday’s panel discussion. “We need wholesale legislative reform.” Von Finckenstein told The Wire Report that an expert panel, comprised of industry officials, consumer groups and experts, could produce set of mandatory considerations and recommendations for the government about how to proceed on the issue. Experts see an authoritative roadmap for regulatory reform as necessary due to federal reluctance to launch into sweeping amendments to the Broadcasting Act, Telecommunications Act, and Radiocommunication Act. It took six years, between 1987 and 1993, to consolidate, modernize, and pass the existing Telecommunications Act. Some fear that the government views regulatory reform, with its attendant consultations, legislative debates, and legal riddles, as more trouble than they’re worth. A C.D. Howe Institute report released in January, titled “Scrambled Signals: Canadian Content Policies in a World of Technological Abundance,” recommended that the government appoint an independent expert panel like the Telecommunications Policy Review Panel to review broadcasting and telecom regulations. The report recommended that the panel be given no more than one year to complete its work and report to the heritage and industry ministers. “Its report should be public and subject to debate before the appropriate committees of Parliament. Its terms of reference should be sufficiently broad to include consideration of legislative change, appropriate objectives for any legislation, foreign ownership rules and policy approaches needed to move to a more simplified and market-based regulatory system,” the C.D. Howe report said. Lawson Hunter, Stikeman Elliott counsel and one of the report’s principal authors, said in an interview that appointing an expert panel to study regulatory reform would help industry, consumer, and public interest stakeholders find common ground before the issue is put to the government. “It brings a level of expertise and in a way it depoliticizes the issue,” said Hunter, who also took part in Thursday’s discussion panel. “Somebody’s got to get everybody in a room, all the parties together, and come up with something that’s acceptable to the various players.” Otherwise, Hunter suggested, industry, the CRTC, and the government risk doing nothing. Hunter said an important question for the panel would be to involve cultural groups and producers in discussions about how to promote Canadian content in the digital age—when much of the communications system is converging online. “We’re not going to get any traction here—because governments are afraid of it—until we come up with a sensible policy on how we’re going to promote Canadian content. We really have to come to grips with what’s happening there,” he said. So far, the Conservative government appears to be taking a more piecemeal than wholesale approach to communications regulatory reform. The government has pledged to open the door to foreign investment, but only for the telecom sector. Industry Minister Tony Clement told The Wire Report in March that he is determining the scope of consultations on the issue. Robert Rabinovitch, former president and CEO of the CBC, also took part in Thursday’s panel, where he said that regulatory intervention in markets is becoming more acceptable. “We are entering an era of re-regulation. If you read what is going on in the United States, and what’s going on in the world, regulation is not a bad word anymore,” he said. sdoyle@thewirereport.ca

Von Finckenstein calls for expert panel to advise on ‘wholesale legislative reform’

Broadcast | May 6, 2010

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