Perry Hoffman
OTTAWA – It’s not very often the country’s telecommunications and cable firms agree with anything the regulator has to say, but on foreign ownership rules, they at least partially support the CRTC’s proposal to a Parliamentary committee studying the matter.
One after the other last week, they addressed the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology on the need to liberalize current foreign investment restrictions for both telecommunications and broadcasting companies. They echoed the CRTC’s position that regulations can protect Canadian content on television and radio.
“While we do not believe there is a problem today, given our investment, innovation, and competitiveness, if the foreign ownership rules are to be liberalized, we think the best model is the one proposed by the CRTC; that is, to boost the foreign voting share limits for telecom and broadcast operating entities up to 49% while retaining the Canadian ‘control in fact’ test,” said Mirko Bibic, chief of regulatory affairs at Bell Canada.
Rogers Communications Inc. also lent its support to the CRTC proposal noting that cable TV and telephone companies have the same network architecture – a fibre-optic cable used to transmit voice, data and video – and there is no reason to treat them differently.
“First, if you are going to change the foreign ownership rules for telecommunications, we think it only makes sense to change the rules for cable television at the same time. Convergence has finally become a reality,” said Ken Engelhart, senior VP of regulatory affairs at Rogers Communications.
Throughout the hearings, the Bloc Québécois has been consistent in questioning whether Canadian content can be protected if foreign entities own TV distributors. The big cable companies and telcos maintain that this can be done through regulations.
“All that is required is a rule prohibiting foreign-controlled carriers from owning broadcast stations or TV channels,” Michael Hennessy, Telus’ senior VP of regulatory and government affairs explained.
MTS Allstream echoed this sentiment by noting there isn’t a slippery slope. “There is a clear line between content on the one hand and carriage on the other,” said Chris Peirce, chief corporate officer at MTS. “Consequently, it is, in our view, indisputable, that the proper policy, legislative and regulatory tools can be employed in support of the important objectives of protecting and promoting Canadian content and culture.”
Companies reject Communications Act
Liberal MP Marc Garneau raised the issue of a single act to govern the communications sector in questioning. Neither Rogers, nor Shaw Communications representative backed a converged Communications Act.
“The purpose of telecommunications legislation is really to regulate until such time as market forces can take over. The purpose of broadcasting or Canadian content regulation is to make sure that market forces never take over. So the two types of legislation have really quite different purposes and I don’t see a lot of merit in combining them,” Engelhart said.
Shaw’s senior VP of corporate and regulatory affairs Ken Stein echoed Rogers’ position but noted there needs to be better policy signals from government.
“Our view on how things need to be dealt with is that there needs to be a stronger role, quite frankly, in the policy environment, for Parliament and also for government, in terms of setting policy direction for the regulator. Our view would be that there should be more strength on that side of it,” he said. “But as for the need to change or integrate the acts, our view is that when you look around the world, that’s not really the solution to the problems that we see facing us. The problems we see facing us over the next number of years have much more to do with the regulatory overburden than they do with the legislative situation.”
This week, the new entrants and the minister of Industry will appear before the committee. Globalive Communications and Public Mobile take the stand on today (April 20) with Industry Minister Tony Clement under the spotlight on Thursday April 22.
