The Americans, not at all keen on the idea that their companies have to subsidize another country’s cultural ambitions, are watching all of this with great interest.
Please tell the CRTC on my behalf that as a retired Canadian reference librarian who consumes online information daily, and was doing online research professionally back in the 1980s, before most people even knew what the internet was, I have never been concerned to know what proportion of the information I consume is Canadian. All I want to know is whether what comes to my attention is interesting, accurate, relevant and useful. Government bodies or policies that attempt to regulate, censor, or shape information flow in any way are unacceptable threats to the health of the information commons.
As I read the history of information diffusion, the major premises underwriting CRTC reasoning and decision-making are all false, and the CRTC would best serve the interests of Canadians by consigning itself to nonexistence. The CRTC's helping hand rests on the shoulders of citizens with a weight reminiscent of that of Orwell's Big Brother; a phrase like 'delusional bureaucratic overreach' seems hardly adequate to describe an impulse that arrogates to itself responsibility for controlling what an entire country sees and hears. No government agency has the wisdom to fulfill such a mandate, nor the ethical right to claim it on your behalf or mine.
While I dealt with some extraordinary individuals at the CRTC in my almost two decades in broadcasting, I applaud your use of “sloth” to describe the Commissions sometimes glacial pace of pondering matters and issuing decisions.
I once waited almost two years for a simple uncontested radio station license renewal, and the draconian Canadian content requirements simply push listeners and viewers away to non-Canadian content.
It’s 2025, the Commission is still mired in “1970’s think,” and I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for Mr. Carney and pals to make changes: the CRTC, is after all, a 1968 child of the Liberals and Trudeau the elder.
There is so little to watch on any streaming services now and with commercials making it no different from cable which we haven’t had ( nor satellite) for over 33 years we have talked about getting rid of it altogether. Sooner or later, if Donald doesn’t set us free ;) that will be our decision. Lose, lose
It’s fucking broken. “Government is not in the business of being in business!”!Ralph Klein. Sure,he made mistakes,but he said it like it is. Heaven for bid someone speaks the truth today
There was a great political comic strip called “Pogo” . One of the characters was called “ Churchy La Femme” borrowed from the theory that a woman was behind any mysterious conspiracy or crime. Any suspects?
In the case of the CRTC, it seems more likely that “Follow the Money” is more appropriate. Especially its history of being an executive revolving door between Regulators and Regulatees.
I’m grateful for my VPN service right now. I suspect I’ll be even more grateful when un-Canadian news start being censored or blocked off streaming services.
“Alberta Clipper dumps heavy wet snow on…” hahahaha! Alberta gets blamed for snowfalls,let’s blame us for wanting complete access to All information without a Canadian Content lens.
On another topic, it took the CBC 6 days to comment on Trump's new National Security Strategy. They wrote on it's impact on and reception by Europe. Not a word about the impact on Canada.
On Saturday, I asked where the CBC's coverage was and included a link to a Telegraph article that did include a comment on Canada. Their respondent wrote back, asking what document I was referencing. It appeared they didn't open the link.
This is supposed to be our national newsroom. A week after the document's release, they still have no comment on it's implications for Canada. Shame on them.
Yesterday, Matt promised to "keep the dial (of US criticism) at its (currently very high) level." Yet here is a well-written criticism of ponderous, ineffective and, frankly, stupid Canadian leadership.
I do not for a second suspect this was due to yesterday's suggestion to "Dial it (US criticism) down". Do I sense some sneaky "balance" creeping onto The Line...or was it simply a slow day for US intolerance?
If you think the CRTC has trouble handling broadcasting issues, cast an eye on the telecommunications side. (Perhaps some have forgotten that the CRTC is Canada's telecom regulator, given its extremely low profile.)
The CRTC has struggled for decades with trying to make Canadian telecommunications markets more competitive, while at the same time maintaining incentives for innovation and investment. One of the principal tools it has developed is estimating the costs of various services, both retail to end customers, and wholesale to their competitors who depend on them for access to essential services.
Proper service costing is difficult. In the late 2010s. the CRTC asked whether it should substitute other tools, but concluded that costing was necessary. In 2020, it promised to launch a review of its existing costing methodology and processes. I am still waiting for any sign of that review.
Given earlier delays, I wrote a letter to then Vice Chair for Telecommunications, a certain Peter Menzies, offering to help the CRTC with its problem. I never received a reply.
I now believe that, on the telecommunications side, an inert regulator is much preferable to an active one. At least it does no harm.
Yes. My letter would have been in 2016. The CRTC was already having a lot of difficulty with its Phase II costing back then. Things only got worse after your departure.
This is all to appease Quebec. I don't know how compatible Quebec is with the rest of the world let alone Canada when it comes to the role of the state
The CRTC is just another one of those great LPC ideas that sound good at first, but fail miserably, with each and every failure quickly categorized as being due to insufficient funding. It, and its many siblings, do little except destroy taxpayer money and hamper economic productivity. On the plus side, they do provide plenty of well-paid sinecures for failed LPC candidates, fart-catchers and bagmen.
I could see the point of a CRTC when broadcast bandwidth was a limited and public commodity.
But extrapolating its responsibilities to determining what Canadians get out of a nearly infinite, global, and non-governmental internet is beyond overreaching.
Let the CRTC confine itself solely to the broadcast medium it was created to manage, and stay out of any other attempts to manage Canadians themselves. That's not its job.
A small contract I work on has dealings with the CRTC. From that experience it seems to me the CRTC accomplishes not a lot of what its own mandates state. I sense a theme here in comments.
I don't disagree that content rules on social media content is ridiculous and the CRTC trying to regulate the internet is even more so, but let's be real about how "reasonable" it is for us to impose highly destructive rules on foreign media companies like Netflix or BritBox. ... it's at least as reasonable as a tariff.
The Americans have been imposing arbitrary taxes, duties and tariffs on our lumber for decades. But somehow it's insane and unreasonable to do the very same thing to Netflix? Oh puh-leaze. Of course it'll just push prices up as Netflix passes most costs on, the same way the Americans have driven up the price of lumber in the USA and do we want that? Maybe not and if we did, we should first make "convenient" changes in our copyright enforcement law that would make it basically impossible to stop thepiratebay.org because copyright law itself only exists to serve the public good.
Requiring French language content on Britbox? Well, we can the same way we insist that Frosted Flakes be half french packaging, but the likely result is BritBox just leaving Canada because the costs are too high, meaning Canadians will either do without or seeing if a VPN to BritBox in the UK or thepiratebay.org will do the trick. (Mostly they'll do without because those things are a hassle so we'll be more isolated with American culture than ever... not great for Canada.)
But let's stop pretending that BritBox and Netflix are the same. The Brits aren't trying to destroy Canada, the Americans are. Driving up the price of Netflix, Disney and Amazon dramatically and leaving BritBox alone would fit "asshole Canada". So changes to copyright law to favour Canadian interests over American ones. It's funny how copyright seems to have a "heads I win, tails you lose" quality when it comes to American companies. The 1928 version of Mickey Mouse is now public domain, but AI companies don't let us create our own 1928 style Mickey Mouse cartoons.. but one does have a licensing agreement with Disney about that.
So yes, the author is right.. but let's not be naive about who's who in this American trade war on it's allies.
I don't think Canadians would be surprised that adding a bunch of middle managers with poly sci degrees to make decisions has slowed a sloth like system further.
Let the frontline staff with industry knowledge and experience make practical decisions based on rationale criteria and get rid of as much of the half baked nanny state wishful thinking as they can, and cut middle management by half.
Please tell the CRTC on my behalf that as a retired Canadian reference librarian who consumes online information daily, and was doing online research professionally back in the 1980s, before most people even knew what the internet was, I have never been concerned to know what proportion of the information I consume is Canadian. All I want to know is whether what comes to my attention is interesting, accurate, relevant and useful. Government bodies or policies that attempt to regulate, censor, or shape information flow in any way are unacceptable threats to the health of the information commons.
As I read the history of information diffusion, the major premises underwriting CRTC reasoning and decision-making are all false, and the CRTC would best serve the interests of Canadians by consigning itself to nonexistence. The CRTC's helping hand rests on the shoulders of citizens with a weight reminiscent of that of Orwell's Big Brother; a phrase like 'delusional bureaucratic overreach' seems hardly adequate to describe an impulse that arrogates to itself responsibility for controlling what an entire country sees and hears. No government agency has the wisdom to fulfill such a mandate, nor the ethical right to claim it on your behalf or mine.
While I dealt with some extraordinary individuals at the CRTC in my almost two decades in broadcasting, I applaud your use of “sloth” to describe the Commissions sometimes glacial pace of pondering matters and issuing decisions.
I once waited almost two years for a simple uncontested radio station license renewal, and the draconian Canadian content requirements simply push listeners and viewers away to non-Canadian content.
It’s 2025, the Commission is still mired in “1970’s think,” and I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for Mr. Carney and pals to make changes: the CRTC, is after all, a 1968 child of the Liberals and Trudeau the elder.
It's a child of Francophone culture pushed onto the whole country.
There is so little to watch on any streaming services now and with commercials making it no different from cable which we haven’t had ( nor satellite) for over 33 years we have talked about getting rid of it altogether. Sooner or later, if Donald doesn’t set us free ;) that will be our decision. Lose, lose
It’s fucking broken. “Government is not in the business of being in business!”!Ralph Klein. Sure,he made mistakes,but he said it like it is. Heaven for bid someone speaks the truth today
There was a great political comic strip called “Pogo” . One of the characters was called “ Churchy La Femme” borrowed from the theory that a woman was behind any mysterious conspiracy or crime. Any suspects?
In the case of the CRTC, it seems more likely that “Follow the Money” is more appropriate. Especially its history of being an executive revolving door between Regulators and Regulatees.
I’m grateful for my VPN service right now. I suspect I’ll be even more grateful when un-Canadian news start being censored or blocked off streaming services.
The CRTC exists why??
“Alberta Clipper dumps heavy wet snow on…” hahahaha! Alberta gets blamed for snowfalls,let’s blame us for wanting complete access to All information without a Canadian Content lens.
On another topic, it took the CBC 6 days to comment on Trump's new National Security Strategy. They wrote on it's impact on and reception by Europe. Not a word about the impact on Canada.
On Saturday, I asked where the CBC's coverage was and included a link to a Telegraph article that did include a comment on Canada. Their respondent wrote back, asking what document I was referencing. It appeared they didn't open the link.
This is supposed to be our national newsroom. A week after the document's release, they still have no comment on it's implications for Canada. Shame on them.
See here: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/209-front-burner/episode/16187258-trumps-vision-for-a-new-world-order
Hey...Now you just wait a minute.
Yesterday, Matt promised to "keep the dial (of US criticism) at its (currently very high) level." Yet here is a well-written criticism of ponderous, ineffective and, frankly, stupid Canadian leadership.
I do not for a second suspect this was due to yesterday's suggestion to "Dial it (US criticism) down". Do I sense some sneaky "balance" creeping onto The Line...or was it simply a slow day for US intolerance?
If you think the CRTC has trouble handling broadcasting issues, cast an eye on the telecommunications side. (Perhaps some have forgotten that the CRTC is Canada's telecom regulator, given its extremely low profile.)
The CRTC has struggled for decades with trying to make Canadian telecommunications markets more competitive, while at the same time maintaining incentives for innovation and investment. One of the principal tools it has developed is estimating the costs of various services, both retail to end customers, and wholesale to their competitors who depend on them for access to essential services.
Proper service costing is difficult. In the late 2010s. the CRTC asked whether it should substitute other tools, but concluded that costing was necessary. In 2020, it promised to launch a review of its existing costing methodology and processes. I am still waiting for any sign of that review.
Given earlier delays, I wrote a letter to then Vice Chair for Telecommunications, a certain Peter Menzies, offering to help the CRTC with its problem. I never received a reply.
I now believe that, on the telecommunications side, an inert regulator is much preferable to an active one. At least it does no harm.
All good points but for clarity’s sake, Peter Menzies left the CRTC in 2017
Yes. My letter would have been in 2016. The CRTC was already having a lot of difficulty with its Phase II costing back then. Things only got worse after your departure.
This is all to appease Quebec. I don't know how compatible Quebec is with the rest of the world let alone Canada when it comes to the role of the state
The CRTC is just another one of those great LPC ideas that sound good at first, but fail miserably, with each and every failure quickly categorized as being due to insufficient funding. It, and its many siblings, do little except destroy taxpayer money and hamper economic productivity. On the plus side, they do provide plenty of well-paid sinecures for failed LPC candidates, fart-catchers and bagmen.
I could see the point of a CRTC when broadcast bandwidth was a limited and public commodity.
But extrapolating its responsibilities to determining what Canadians get out of a nearly infinite, global, and non-governmental internet is beyond overreaching.
Let the CRTC confine itself solely to the broadcast medium it was created to manage, and stay out of any other attempts to manage Canadians themselves. That's not its job.
A small contract I work on has dealings with the CRTC. From that experience it seems to me the CRTC accomplishes not a lot of what its own mandates state. I sense a theme here in comments.
I don't disagree that content rules on social media content is ridiculous and the CRTC trying to regulate the internet is even more so, but let's be real about how "reasonable" it is for us to impose highly destructive rules on foreign media companies like Netflix or BritBox. ... it's at least as reasonable as a tariff.
The Americans have been imposing arbitrary taxes, duties and tariffs on our lumber for decades. But somehow it's insane and unreasonable to do the very same thing to Netflix? Oh puh-leaze. Of course it'll just push prices up as Netflix passes most costs on, the same way the Americans have driven up the price of lumber in the USA and do we want that? Maybe not and if we did, we should first make "convenient" changes in our copyright enforcement law that would make it basically impossible to stop thepiratebay.org because copyright law itself only exists to serve the public good.
Requiring French language content on Britbox? Well, we can the same way we insist that Frosted Flakes be half french packaging, but the likely result is BritBox just leaving Canada because the costs are too high, meaning Canadians will either do without or seeing if a VPN to BritBox in the UK or thepiratebay.org will do the trick. (Mostly they'll do without because those things are a hassle so we'll be more isolated with American culture than ever... not great for Canada.)
But let's stop pretending that BritBox and Netflix are the same. The Brits aren't trying to destroy Canada, the Americans are. Driving up the price of Netflix, Disney and Amazon dramatically and leaving BritBox alone would fit "asshole Canada". So changes to copyright law to favour Canadian interests over American ones. It's funny how copyright seems to have a "heads I win, tails you lose" quality when it comes to American companies. The 1928 version of Mickey Mouse is now public domain, but AI companies don't let us create our own 1928 style Mickey Mouse cartoons.. but one does have a licensing agreement with Disney about that.
So yes, the author is right.. but let's not be naive about who's who in this American trade war on it's allies.
In much of the country folks see Laurentian culture just as foreign and hostile as American culture.
I don't think Canadians would be surprised that adding a bunch of middle managers with poly sci degrees to make decisions has slowed a sloth like system further.
Let the frontline staff with industry knowledge and experience make practical decisions based on rationale criteria and get rid of as much of the half baked nanny state wishful thinking as they can, and cut middle management by half.