CPC leadership contenders outline views on media, telecom issues

On May 27, members of the Conservative Party of Canada will select who will succeed former prime minister Stephen Harper as permanent leader of the party, relieving interim Opposition leader Rona Ambrose of her caretaker duties. Fourteen people are in the running for the party’s top job, with an eye to becoming the country’s next prime minister following the 2019 election. The Wire Report reached out to all of the candidates for their positions on telecom and media issues and received emailed responses from five: Chris Alexander, Maxime Bernier, Michael Chong, Pierre Lemieux and Rick Peterson. The wireless market Under the previous Conservative government, there was a push for four national wireless carriers to boost competition and lower prices. Rick Peterson, a B.C.-based businessman, said the “policies pursued by the Harper government were and still are the best approach to this market. Canadians continue to pay the highest rates and fees in this global sector. Increased competition lowers prices.” Michael Chong, MP for the Wellington-Halton Hills, Ont., riding — located just outside of the Greater Toronto Area — said he disagrees with his potential predecessor’s approach. “The previous government was not successful in creating a fourth wireless carrier in Canada. To promote competition, the government should instead review current restrictions on foreign ownership in the telecommunications sector, in order to ensure better access to capital and more competition. Canada is one of the only major economies in the world with foreign ownership restrictions in the telecommunications sector,” he said. Former Ontario MP and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander said the new digital economy is central to his campaign that’s focused on “a New Canada,” and that he would “continue opening the market to stronger competition — by domestic and foreign companies.” Quebec MP, and former industry minister, Maxime Bernier said it’s not up to the government to decide how many players should operate in a market. “In a free and open market without regulatory barriers to entry, competitive forces — including potential competition from new technologies and foreign players — are what determines the optimal number of players,” he said, adding that his plan is “to remove the remaining barriers in foreign investment (preventing foreign control for companies that have more than 10% of the Canadian market), to abolish the role of the CRTC in the telecom sector, and to let companies compete freely for the benefit of Canadian consumers.” Future of the CRTC Bernier said last June he would turn over what’s left of the CRTC’s function to Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. Alexander said he would keep the CRTC but change its mandate “to promote Canadian content for the digital age.” He said that “an overhauled CRTC should promote choice, innovation and Canadian-made excellence.” Overhauling the CRTC is also the way to go, said Chong, noting that both the regulator and CBC/Radio-Canada were “established ‘pre-Internet’ and both are increasingly not fulfilling their original mandates in our rapidly changing digital era.” He said that “using the regulated spectrum to mandate the delivery of Canadian content may have worked in the pre-Internet era of the 1970s and 1980s, but no longer works today.” Chong added that the CRTC “still has a role to play in regulating the technical aspects of the spectrum, issuing licenses, managing the do-not-call lists and ensuring sufficient competition,” but that it has outlived its “role in regulating the delivery of Canadian content on the spectrum” since an increasing number of Canadians are accessing content “directly, and unregulated” via online outlets such as Netflix Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc.’s iTunes. The CRTC would also get a facelift under Peterson, who said its role would be to focus more on increasing competition and wireless pricing. He said he’d also want to reduce the number of commissioners to six and have them be accountable in that “every cell and data bill sent out to individual subscribers should contain a brief explanation of the CRTC role and contact information for board members.” Netflix tax When it comes to over-the-top (OTT) services such as Netflix and having them be subject to sales tax or Canadian content contributions, Peterson said OTT “should not be subject to Canadian content provisions.” Chong said he was opposed to any Netflix tax and doesn’t support “any restrictions on over-the-top TV services in Canada,” any “regulation of over-the-top TV services,” or any Canadian content requirements. “If Canadians want the government to create more Canadian content, the government should accomplish that goal through direct funding rather than through regulation,” he said. “However, I do believe that goods, such as movie purchases, and services, such as movie rentals, should be subject to the GST, in order to ensure a fair and equitable taxation system.” “No new taxes,” Alexander said. “On the contrary, we should modernize regulation and reward innovation (through tax credits) for Canadian platforms (including streaming platforms) that succeed in Canada and beyond.” Bernier noted that the Netflix tax which Harper and others denounced in 2015 was an ambiguous term and that he supported the idea of sales tax being collected on foreign OTT services. “It is unfair for Canadian service providers charging sales taxes to have to compete with foreign OTT that don’t,” Bernier said. “However, I don’t think foreign services should have to contribute to Canadian content or be regulated. Funding for Canadian content needs to be reviewed and I am looking forward to the results of Minister Joly’s consultations,” he said in reference to Heritage Canada’s ongoing review of Canadian content in a digital age. Net neutrality A main principle of an overhauled CRTC would be to support net neutrality, Alexander said, adding he favours “an open Internet, with full neutrality.” However, he said he would “oppose prescriptive intrusive regulation in this regard. Net neutrality should be closely related to competition policy: more choice favours less bias.” Chong also said he supports the principle of net neutrality, as “the Internet is an essential communications platform in a modern society, just like POTS (plain old telephone service) was 50 years ago.” The federal government “should ensure that broadband Internet is available to both rural and urban communities. It should also ensure that the Internet is equitably available to individuals and companies, regardless of size, in order to prevent anti-competitive behaviour on part of large corporations,” Chong said. Peterson said he is supportive of net neutrality, while Bernier noted he backed the “universally accepted basic rules of net neutrality such as not blocking or slowing down the websites and services of competitors.” He made the distinction that what he didn’t support was “a more systematic application of net neutrality rules, such as forbidding zero-rating services,” like those recently studied by the CRTC, because it prevents innovation and service differentiation. “If applied systematically, net neutrality would ultimately lead to treating providers like public utilities. I believe in free market competition, not government control. Without a regulator like the CRTC, there would be no more net neutrality regulation and only anticompetitive behaviour would be sanctioned by the Competition Bureau,” Bernier said. The future of the CBC Bernier outlined his plans for the country’s public broadcaster in November, saying he would streamline the CBC’s mandate to focus more on regional and national interests and remove advertising. Alexander is also proposing a mandate renewal so that the CBC has a focus “on open media; Canada in the global economy; outstanding Canadian content (drama and documentary); international, regional and official language minority news; indigenous languages, culture and communities; and Canadian culture.” Peterson said under his government, the CBC would be “significantly scaled back to provide a focus on regional news, weather, sports,” and that it wouldn’t be allowed to sell ads. He also said there is no need for the CBC “to provide content related to major urban centres.” Canada needs a public broadcaster to serve rural and remote communities and to serve official-language minority communities, Chong said, but the CBC isn’t living up to its original mandate and that mandate needs to be reviewed. “The goal of the mandate review should be to ensure that CBC/Radio Canada is more focussed on what should be its core mandate: Delivering news, content and information to all Canadians in both official languages in a way that doesn’t undermine the viability of private-sector broadcasters, content producers and news organizations,” Chong said. “The mandate review should also consider the ongoing complaint that CBC/Radio Canada has a particular political bias, and consider a mechanism to ensure that public broadcaster’s coverage is balanced and fair.” Pierre Lemieux, former MP for the Glengarry-Prescott-Russell region east of Ottawa, did not answer The Wire Report’s specific questions but offered this statement: “Canadians deserve the widest range of choice possible in the content they receive and from which providers. My campaign has focused on increased personal freedoms and I would apply these same principles to telecommunications policy. Government restrictions should be reduced to an absolute minimum and policies should encourage the creation and delivery of services and content that Canadians actually want.” He also said he believes that “the influence in particular of news media in government decision-making has hindered previous governments from making substantial changes to the ways in which telecommunications are regulated, and that this must also be reduced,” the first step of which would be to restrict those recently employed as journalists from signing on as political government staff. — With reporting by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

CPC leadership contenders outline views on media, telecom issues

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