OTTAWA – The federal government should revive the department of communications as part of its review of broadcasting, telecommunications and radiocommunication legislation, a University of Calgary expert on the relationship between communications systems and governments told a conference on Canada’s electronic communications law at the University of Ottawa last week.
Rather than having the minister for Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada responsible for the Telecommunications Act and Radiocommunication Act, and the Canadian Heritage minister responsible for the Broadcasting Act, “we need a ministry whose sole purpose is the oversight of the Canadian communication system,” said Gregory Taylor, an assistant professor in the communication, media and film department at the U of C, at the two-day Policy 3.0 Communications Law for the 21st Century symposium organized by the Forum for Research and Policy in Communications.
Taylor delivered the same message earlier this year in a submission to the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review Panel in which he argued that “communications is too important for it to be a side venture in a larger department.”
The federal communications department was established to oversee radio, television and telephone communications and supervise the CRTC in 1969 by the Department of Communications Act, which was repealed in 1995. A year later, oversight for telecom policy was handed to the then-industry minister and the cultural component was given to the minister of the newly created Canadian Heritage department.
“As the world began the Internet experiment, Canada got rid of our one ministry that could have overseen all of it,” said Taylor. “Canadian regulatory institutions diverged as global communications increasingly converged – and I think we need to reassess that.”
He explained that the federal communications department played an important role in the development of communications technology.
When the ministry was created, the Defense Research Telecommunications Establishment was transferred to the department’s research branch and was renamed the Communications Research Centre (CRC), now under Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED).
“This organization, under the department of communications, was responsible for a lot of the technological advancements of the Canadian communications system,” said Taylor.
For example during that time, the CRC designed and managed Hermes, a high-power direct broadcast communications satellite and the first one to operate in the Ku band that was launched by NASA in 1976. Two years later, Hermes delivered the world’s first direct-to-home satellite TV broadcast of an NHL Stanley Cup game. (The communications department and NASA were jointly awarded an Emmy in 1987 for their joint role in developing Ku-band satellite technology through the Hermes program.)
“Can a government ministry effectively balance the technical and economic demands of ISED with the culturally focused elements of Canadian Heritage?” Taylor asked rhetorically. “The short answer is yes. In academia, we call that communication studies.”
However, Samer Bishay, president and CEO of telecom-services provider Iristel, Ice Wireless and co-founder of Toronto-based Kepler Communications, which next year plans to deploy a constellation of 50 low-orbit satellites to deliver high-speed wireless Internet service in Canada’s North, believes that it is impossible to unite broadcasting with telecom under one umbrella.
“Broadcast changes societies by shaping the aspirations of ordinary people,” Bishay told conference attendees. “Communications, on the other hand, connects ordinary people by breaking down barriers of these societies.”
He explained that prior to the Telecommunications Act becoming law in 1993, telecom was governed under the Railway Act of 1906, “which made a lot more sense… There was universal access; just and reasonable tolls; and non-discrimination of customers,” said Bishay. “That is not the landscape we operate today in Canada as the underdog.”
