BTLR panel wades through 2,085 submissions
OTTAWA – The federal government’s Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review (BTLR) made public its preliminary report today, a summary of what it heard from more than 2,000 written submissions and a dozen conferences spread out over the past 10 months.
Its What We Heard Report, released today along with all of those written submissions (see links below), reflects the panel’s “extensive outreach and engagement process to hear what Canadians had to say about updating the existing laws to reflect the realities of our rapidly evolving digital world,” says the announcement.
In September 2018, the panel launched an open call for comments inviting written submissions from interested parties, and to complement the written submission process, travelled to 11 cities and met with 150 interested parties representing the industry, creators, Indigenous communities, official language minority communities, public interest groups, accessibility groups and others.
Panel members also attended varios industry conferences to hear feedback during its consultative process.
What We Heard is organized under four themes:
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Reducing barriers to access by all Canadians to advanced telecommunications networks
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Supporting the creation, production and discoverability of Canadian content
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Improving the rights of the digital consumer
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Renewing the institutional framework for the communications sector
“The panel members and I extend our thanks to all those who shared their thoughts and contributed their expertise during our consultation period”, said Janet Yale, the panel’s chair, in a press release today. “We are examining a number of vital issues impacting consumers, creators, and companies operating in this new digital landscape.
“The variety of perspectives we heard will strengthen our work as we now complete our final report and recommendations.”
The deadline for that report is January 31, 2020.
Cartt.ca will have a bit more on this preliminary report later today. For Cartt.ca’s additional, much more detailed breakdown of some of the more important submissions, click here.
Important links:
As a reminder, the panel members are:
Janet Yale is chair of the panel and is currently president and CEO of The Arthritis Society. Prior to that, she had a long career in communications as a senior executive with Telus and as CEO of the Canadian Cable Television Association, and also served as a director general at the CRTC.
Peter S. Grant is counsel and past chair of the technology, communications and intellectual property group at law firm McCarthy Tétrault LLP in Toronto. He is considered a pioneer in the field of communications law in Canada, and his practice touches all areas of communications law – broadcasting and cable television, satellite services, copyright, mass media and press law, cultural industries and telecommunications.
Hank Intven is an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria in the areas of telecommunications, broadcasting and Internet law. For more than 30 years, he has been recognized as a leading advisor to business, governments and regulators in the telecommunications and broadcasting industries and has a long background in writing and consulting on telecom policy in Canada. He was executive director of Telecommunications at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission in the 1980s and later was the main external advisor to the Canadian government in the preparation of the 1993 Canadian Telecommunications Act. He was also one of three members of the Government of Canada’s Telecommunications Policy Review Panel, which delivered a blueprint for the future of Canadian telecommunications policy in March 2006.
Marina Pavlovic joined the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa in July 2007 as an assistant professor. She is a member of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society at the university, and is an expert in dispute resolution, access to justice, conflict of laws, consumer protection, comparative law, and technology regulation and policy.
Monique Simard has a long and distinguished track record in the cultural industries. She was president and CEO of the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles (SODEC) from 2014 to 2018, and was previously director general of the National Film Board of Canada's French Program. In April 2018, she was appointed as Chair of the Board of the Quebecor Fund.
Monica Song is the head of Denton’s Communications Law group. She has nearly 20 years of experience as a leading Canadian lawyer in telecommunications and broadcasting, with in-depth knowledge of the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) and the CRTC.
Pierre Trudel is a law professor at the Université de Montréal. He has also been a guest lecturer at Université Laval (Québec City), at Université de Paris II (Panthéon-Assas) and at Université de Namur (Belgium). From 1986 to 1988, he was the research director for the working group commissioned by the federal government to look at broadcasting policies. (Trudel is also the author of Droit de la radio et de la television, which is one of the first Canadian broadcast law textbooks.)
