OTTAWA – The federal government today officially launched its promised review of the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Acts with a seven member panel of thinkers and experts who will also look at updating the Radiocommunications Act.
(So, it's not just Joly's panel, as we had surmised earlier...)
“New technology, like streaming services, has changed the way that Canadians connect with each other, do business and discover, access and consume content. Now more than ever, Canadians go online. To keep up with these changes we must modernize our legislative framework so that Canadian artists, artisans, businesses, consumers and broadcasters can adapt and thrive in a changing environment,” reads the press release issued Tuesday morning.
A single line notes the Radiocommunication Act will also be reviewed with this process.
This review is meant to come up with recommendations which take “into account the realities of Canadian consumers and businesses, and our artists, artisans and broadcasters without increasing the cost of services to Canadians,” continues the announcement.
However, don't look for any proposals from the panel that will increase costs for Canadians. Speaking on background, a Heritage spokesperson told Cartt.ca in an email the government will "reject all proposals that increase what Canadians already pay."
(Ed note: That sort of thing would likely be left to the CRTC because it will then have to craft new policies to suit new legislation when it is completed – and according to the report it filed with the federal government last week, it hopes any new contributions from new sources would be "revenue neutral" for Canadians.)
The review will also address how to best promote competition and affordability for internet and mobile wireless and will examine “how to best support the creation, production and distribution of Canadian content in both French and English—and focus on updating and modernizing the broadcasting system by exploring how all players are reflected within it and can contribute to it.”
The panel is to engage with the industry, creators, and all Canadians, so we’re expecting the announcement of various cross-country public consultations of sorts to listen to everyone the government has told them to talk to. The final report and recommendations are due by January 31, 2020, when, of course, there will be a newly elected government. The next federal election is in October 2019.
The announcement also notes this review will be “guided by the principle of net neutrality and will explore opportunities to further enshrine in legislation the principles of net neutrality in the provision and carriage of all telecommunications services.”
The announcement offers no definition of net neutrality. One supposes that daunting task will be left up to the panel members.
Janet Yale will chair this review panel. She is currently president and CEO of The Arthritis Society and prior to that had a long career in communications as a senior executive with Telus and as CEO of the Canadian Cable Television Association. She also served as a director general at the CRTC.
The panel is also composed of, reads the release:
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 (Ed note: it’s a press release but this is completely accurate). 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. (Ed note: He's a Canadian telecom policy heavyweight.)
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. She is an expert in dispute resolution, access to justice, conflict of laws, consumer protection, comparative law, and technology regulation and policy. (She is a consumer advocate and if you follow her on Twitter as we do, you know she will strongly deliver that point of view in this review.)
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 the author of Droit de la radio et de la television, which is one of the first Canadian broadcast law textbooks.)
For more info, click here for the direct instructions to the panel.
More to come.
