Siding with critics would be ‘grave disservice’: Blais

OTTAWA — The CRTC has transformed over the past few years to become less binary — with outcomes that were strictly either pro-business or pro-consumer — in its decision making and more into an organization that finds the balance that best serves the public interest, according to chairman Jean-Pierre Blais. In a Thursday evening speech delivered at the Public Interest Advocacy Centre’s (PIAC) annual fundraiser that referenced no less prominent figures than Canadian pioneer Samuel de Champlain, architect Buckminster Fuller, and President John F. Kennedy, Blais asked his audience to weigh the perspective of those who complain about the CRTC’s recent changes and decisions. “I urge anyone who feels swayed by those complaints to ask themselves in whose interests these individuals, groups and businesses act. What do they have to lose by railing against change?” Blais said. “I can tell you that if we as regulators were to always side with these voices, we would do more than just a grave disservice to individuals in the post-disruption age.” The post-disruption age, where "everything is about broadband," is one in which the CRTC has had to adapt its own thinking, Blais said. “Where previously the work we did focused on rules — how many hours of Canadian content had to be broadcast in a day, for example — our focus now must be on outcomes. Our role has to be about ensuring robust infrastructure is in place to accommodate the service streams that are banking, healthcare, government services, media, entertainment, taxation and so on to flow.” Some of those outcomes led to changes such as mandating wholesale access to fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) networks to incumbents’ competitors, instituting the Wireless Code, and the new community TV framework. “We did all these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard, if I may paraphrase John F. Kennedy. They had to be done,” Blais said. “We couldn’t continue to foster a rules-first environment in the regulatory wilderness when so much of the landscape had changed.” Thursday night’s speech was a companion piece to the remarks Blais delivered a week prior to open the annual conference of the Canadian chapter of the International Institute of Communications. Where previously he focused on the various changes made since 2012, Blais said his aim Thursday was on how the CRTC did it, "because doing the right thing well is more important than doing the right thing." Canadians have more choice than ever when it comes to communications and media providers, so it "only made sense for us as regulators to embrace that multiplicity of choice,” Blais said, which meant giving “consumers the tools they need to partner with the service providers” to meet their needs. “The other option, to ignore the change that is afoot and continue to promote rules rather than outcomes, would have been the regulatory equivalent of wandering through the woods without a map or compass," Blais said. — With reporting by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca and editing by Ahmad Hathout at ahathout@thewirereport.ca

Siding with critics would be ‘grave disservice’: Blais

Broadcast | November 25, 2016

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