Telcos should invest in think-tanks to help influence policy debates, Hunter says

Canada’s telecom companies should find new ways to invest in shaping public policy since they can no longer donate to political parties directly, said Lawson Hunter, counsel at Stikeman Elliott and a former head of the federal Competition Bureau. In a panel discussion Tuesday at the International Institute of Communications’ annual conference in Ottawa, Hunter, a former BCE Inc. executive, said Canada’s incumbent wireless providers should not have been surprised that they’ve faced a series of unfavourable government policies over the past two years. “The business community should have seen this coming when the campaign election financing rules changed,” Hunter said in reference to the federal 2006 Federal Accountability Act, which prohibits corporations from making donations to federal political parties. “If you want to be able to shape public policy then you better quickly figure out what the instruments are going to be available to you to do that.” The federal government and Canada’s incumbent telecom carriers launched this summer opposing public relations campaigns focused on Canada’s telecom policies, and in particular on Industry Canada’s rules for the upcoming 700 MHz spectrum auction. BCE and fellow incumbent provider Telus Corp. also launched Federal Court lawsuits challenging the industry minister’s authority to limit how much spectrum they can bid on, and Telus launched a separate lawsuit that challenges the minister’s ability to impose new spectrum transfer rules that Industry Canada finalized in June. The federal government has said each of those policies was designed to foster more competition in the industry to the benefit of consumers. Following limits on campaign financing brought in by the former Liberal government, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government introduced the Federal Accountability Act in 2006, which banned corporate and union donations and lowered the annual contribution limits for individuals to $1,000. (Those limits are now $1,200 due to inflation). Industry Minister James Moore said in September that the ban on corporate political donations has emboldened the government to consider consumers’ interests in its policy making decision. “We can now make policy decisions that are in the best interests of all Canadians, and we're not beholden to the pressures of political friends,” he said. Hunter said Tuesday that telecom carriers should redirect the money they used to spend on political financing toward think-tanks and other groups that can help shape public policy debates. He said this could help inform the debate about telecom policy to the carriers’ benefit. “You should be investing that in think-tanks, you should be investing that in public policy debate in this country,” he said. “We aren’t articulating, we are not doing the analysis, we are not having a debate about public policy at the level of sophistication that we should be, and the business community has, in my view, done very little.” John Lawford, executive director of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC), said during the panel debate that the incumbent carriers’ influence with the government waned further this summer during their public relations campaigns against the spectrum auction rules. Those campaigns, he said, were designed to embarrass the government, and were a “slap to the face” to the consumers the government policies were trying to benefit. “Industry feels it’s lost the ear of government, it’s not very happy and we have conferences like this to discuss the crisis and how you can possibly get back in there and get your influence back,” he said. “It may or may not happen.” In a follow-up interview, Lawford said industry players should recognize the difference between consumer interests—which consider what is best for consumers and which the government says its telecom policies are based on—and the broader “public interest,” which considers what is best for consumers and the companies that contribute to a functioning economy. “Everybody should agree that public interest is what we’re all working for,” he said. “The only reason we’re having this argument is because corporate interests feel they’ve lost some influence with government decision-makers recently and they’re attacking the consumer interest.” Richard French, a former CRTC vice-chair of telecommunications and a BCE executive before that, said on the panel that the government is within its rights to focus on the consumer interest, as opposed to the larger public interest. The government, he added, should provide supporting evidence or a “set of value principles” to explain its decisions and policies. “As a matter of principle, there’s nothing wrong with a commitment to consumer welfare on the part of the government as a primary axis of its public policy,” he said. French said Industry Canada advertisements that ran on TV, radio and in national newspapers this summer marked “a spectacular departure” from the industry’s previous relationship with government. Those ads, which responded to the incumbents’ campaigns against the government’s wireless policies, noted that incumbent carriers BCE, Telus and Rogers Communications Inc. “hold more than 85 per cent of Canada’s wireless airwaves” and more than 90 per cent of the market. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have more choice?” one advertisement said. “This takes a specific segment of a very important industry and subjects it to the pressure of essentially a political campaign financed by taxpayer dollars,” French said of the ads on Tuesday. “I don’t think I’ve seen as low a point in business-government relations,” he added. —With reporting by Nicholas Kyonka at nkyonka@thewirereport.ca and files from and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Telcos should invest in think-tanks to help influence policy debates, Hunter says

News | November 19, 2013

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Telcos should invest in think-tanks to help influence policy debates, Hunter says

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