Business
A tiny spark of hope in another soul-crushing round of CRTC hearings: Peter Menzies
From the MacDonald Laurier Institute
By Peter Menzies
It was as if the internet — the most democratizing, weird, wonderful, frightening and important technological development in communications since the printing press — had never been invented.
Earlier this month, halfway through answering a question from the House of Commons Industry committee, Annette Verschusen abruptly removed her headphones, stood up, unplugged, and walked out.
It was shocking.
And yet, in a rascally sort of way, I admired it. Yes, yes, the former head of Home Depot Canada and the chancellor of Cape Breton University recently had to resign as chair of Sustainable Development Technology Canada and is under investigation by the Ethics Commissioner for approving hundreds of thousands of dollars in Green Fund grants to her own company, NRStor Inc. But still, who among us hasn’t fantasized about acting out in similar fashion when the blinding light of revelation strikes and it suddenly dawns on you: “WTF am I even doing here? I don’t need this shit.”
And, in your fantasy, you just get up and leave. Like Verschusen did.
I confess I once harboured a similar impulse towards the end of an arduous Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) hearing along the lines of the three-week-long epic that concluded Dec. 8.
Part of my despair was likely due to being tired. Everyone who appears before a CRTC panel (I was a Commissioner for a decade) deserves one’s full attention and there are thousands of pages of required reading in the weeks leading up to and in the evenings during a hearing.
Then there’s the hearing room. Seemingly designed by Dante Alighieri to sap the will to live from those condemned to work within it, the room’s about the size of an elementary school gym. There are no windows or art and the ambiance complements the soulless mid-century Soviet architectural style of Gatineau’s public buildings.
But — and I hesitate to confess this — it was the relentless rent-seeking that made my mind wander during breaks and impishly imagine what would happen if I just unplugged my laptop, got up, walked out through the crowds, got a cab straight to the airport and never came back. Because eventually, most CRTC hearings devolve into two broad categories. One is a series of presentations from large, protected and profitable companies explaining the dire consequences if they don’t get their way. The other is a seemingly endless parade of well-meaning groups begging for the large companies’ money lest their roles as cultural saviours are diminished. It’s predictably tiresome, tedious and exhausting. But the stakeholders know that commissioners come and go on a regular basis, so no cause to worry about them getting wise to the game.
I was reminded of that inappropriate thought while monitoring the final week of this most recent hearing. When I wasn’t watching, I was reading transcripts and experiencing it all in a mildly PTSDish sort of way.
This hearing was the first of three scheduled to implement the Online Streaming Act (Bill C-11) which amended the Broadcasting Act for the first time since 1991 in order to “modernize” it by — absurdly, in my view — defining the internet as broadcasting and putting it lock, stock and barrel under the authority of the CRTC, which was first formed in 1968 to make sure Anne Murray and Terry Jacks got fair play on the radio airwaves.
This first phase — in which offshore streamers such as Netflix and Disney+ made their regulatory debut — was supposed to be about three things:
- Defining the cutoff line — $10 million, $25 million or $50 million in annual revenue — the CRTC would use to study which companies must buck up and fund Canadian content;
- Deciding how much those companies would have to pay;
- Determining how many different funds should get the loot and how many groups would be involved — BIPOC, Indigenous, LGBTQ2S, etc.
It wasn’t the debilitating boredom of it all that was the most difficult to overcome. Nor was it the acronym-laden banter between the panel and stakeholders that rendered the discourse incomprehensible to ordinary Canadians. And while the manner in which consumers’ interests were disregarded was beyond frustrating, that wasn’t the worst part.
The seriously soul-crushing aspect was that this hearing looked, sounded and felt exactly like CRTC broadcasting hearings have looked, sounded and felt for 30 years.
It was as if the internet — the most democratizing, weird, wonderful, frightening and important technological development in communications since the printing press — had never been invented.
It was a funereal procession of grim-faced presenters from large, often outrageously profitable domestic companies involved in providing telephone, mobile, internet, cable and broadcasting crying woe are we, declaring the industry to be in “crisis,” demanding “urgent” relief from their regulatory burdens and threatening the jobs of thousands of workers should they not get their way. They even got the ball rolling on a whole new fund for local news production lest democracy die. Because, without them, of course it will.
This was followed by a chorus line of vested interests explaining how important it is for the regulator to ensure lotsa cash flows in their direction lest the nation’s creative aesthetic dies under the jackboot of American cultural imperialism. And — OMG! — whatever happens don’t make me have to move to Hollywood. You know, like poor old Ryan Reynolds did.
There were, to be fair, bright parts when the companies and workers that have built success on the internet politely explained, with respect, that what the CRTC was talking about makes no sense in 2023. None whatsoever. Some even begged the panel of Commissioners to please “do no harm.”
Welcome as something — anything — “modern” was during what otherwise was a bad acid flashback to decades past, it was not enough to revive any sense of optimism. At least not until YouTuber J.J. McCullough — the penultimate presenter — showed up.
In words everyone can understand, he said that we are in “a time when there’s a huge thriving sort of forward‑looking modern youthful wing of the Canadian cultural economy and cultural space in the form of online content creators who are often very entrepreneurial, very self‑directed people that have started from very little and have become very successful.”
And that there is concern with “the idea that those people are perhaps in some way like a problem that now needs to be solved in order to sort of subsidize people that, you know, god bless them, are sort of clinging to perhaps a dream of success in a medium that there just isn’t market or public demand for any more.”
It offered a small flicker of hope that, somehow, the 21st century and all its possibilities might yet survive the CRTC’s smothering embrace.
Then again, as the saying goes, it’s the hope that kills you.
Peter Menzies is a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, past vice-chair of the CRTC and a former newspaper publisher.
From Conservative Party Communications
The Hon. Pierre Poilievre, Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and the Official Opposition, released the following statement on the threat of tariffs from the US:
“Canada is facing a critical challenge. On February 1st we are facing the risk of unjustified 25% tariffs by our largest trading partner that would have damaging consequences across our country. Our American counterparts say they want to stop the illegal flow of drugs and other criminal activity at our border. The Liberal government admits their weak border is a problem. That is why they announced a multibillion-dollar border plan—a plan they cannot fund because they shut down Parliament, preventing MPs and Senators from authorizing the funds.
“We also need retaliatory tariffs, something that requires urgent Parliamentary consideration.
“Yet, Liberals have shut Parliament in the middle of this crisis. Canada has never been so weak, and things have never been so out of control. Liberals are putting themselves and their leadership politics ahead of the country. Freeland and Carney are fighting for power rather than fighting for Canada.
“Common Sense Conservatives are calling for Trudeau to reopen Parliament now to pass new border controls, agree on trade retaliation and prepare a plan to rescue Canada’s weak economy.
“The Prime Minister has the power to ask the Governor General to cut short prorogation and get our Parliament working.
“Open Parliament. Take back control. Put Canada First.”
From the Fraser Institute
Canadian federal politicians are floundering in their responses to Donald Trump’s tariff and annexation threats. Unfortunately, they’re stuck in a 2016 mindset, still thinking Trump is a temporary aberration who should be disdained and ignored by the global community. But a lot has changed. Anyone wanting to understand Trump’s current priorities should spend less time looking at trade statistics and more time understanding the details of the lawfare campaigns against him. Canadian officials who had to look up who Kash Patel is, or who don’t know why Nathan Wade’s girlfriend finds herself in legal jeopardy, will find the next four years bewildering.
Three years ago, Trump was on the ropes. His first term had been derailed by phony accusations of Russian collusion and a Ukrainian quid pro quo. After 2020, the Biden Justice Department and numerous Democrat prosecutors devised implausible legal theories to launch multiple criminal cases against him and people who worked in his administration. In summer 2022, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago and leaked to the press rumours of stolen nuclear codes and theft of government secrets. After Trump announced his candidacy in 2022, he was hit by wave after wave of indictments and civil suits strategically filed in deep blue districts. His legal bills soared while his lawyers past and present battled well-funded disbarment campaigns aimed at making it impossible for him to obtain counsel. He was assessed hundreds of millions of dollars in civil penalties and faced life in prison if convicted.
This would have broken many men. But when he was mug-shotted in Georgia on Aug. 24, 2023, his scowl signalled he was not giving in. In the 11 months from that day to his fist pump in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump managed to defeat and discredit the lawfare attacks, assemble and lead a highly effective campaign team, knock Joe Biden off the Democratic ticket, run a series of near daily (and sometimes twice daily) rallies, win over top business leaders in Silicon Valley, open up a commanding lead in the polls and not only survive an assassination attempt but turn it into an image of triumph. On election day, he won the popular vote and carried the White House and both Houses of Congress.
It’s Trump’s world now, and Canadians should understand two things about it. First, he feels no loyalty to domestic and multilateral institutions that have governed the world for the past half century. Most of them opposed him last time and many were actively weaponized against him. In his mind, and in the thinking of his supporters, he didn’t just defeat the Democrats, he defeated the Republican establishment, most of Washington including the intelligence agencies, the entire corporate media, the courts, woke corporations, the United Nations and its derivatives, universities and academic authorities, and any foreign governments in league with the World Economic Forum. And it isn’t paranoia; they all had some role in trying to bring him down. Gaining credibility with the new Trump team will require showing how you have also fought against at least some of these groups.
Second, Trump has earned the right to govern in his own style, including saying whatever he wants. He’s a negotiator who likes trash-talking, so get used to it and learn to decode his messages.
When Trump first threatened tariffs, he linked it to two demands: stop the fentanyl going into the United States from Canada and meet our NATO spending targets. We should have done both long ago. In response, Trudeau should have launched an immediate national action plan on military readiness, border security and crackdowns on fentanyl labs. His failure to do so invited escalation. Which, luckily, only consisted of taunts about annexation. Rather than getting whiny and defensive, the best response (in addition to dealing with the border and defence issues) would have been to troll back by saying that Canada would fight any attempt to bring our people under the jurisdiction of the corrupt U.S. Department of Justice, and we will never form a union with a country that refuses to require every state to mandate photo I.D. to vote and has so many election problems as a result.
As to Trump’s complaints about the U.S. trade deficit with Canada, this is a made-in-Washington problem. The U.S. currently imports $4 trillion in goods and services from the rest of the world but only sells $3 trillion back in exports. Trump looks at that and says we’re ripping them off. But that trillion-dollar difference shows up in the U.S. National Income and Product Accounts as the capital account balance. The rest of the world buys that much in U.S. financial instruments each year, including treasury bills that keep Washington functioning. The U.S. savings rate is not high enough to cover the federal government deficit and all the other domestic borrowing needs. So the Americans look to other countries to cover the difference. Canada’s persistent trade surplus with the U.S. ($108 billion in 2023) partly funds that need. Money that goes to buying financial instruments can’t be spent on goods and services.
So the other response to the annexation taunts should be to remind Trump that all the tariffs in the world won’t shrink the trade deficit as long as Congress needs to borrow so much money each year. Eliminate the budget deficit and the trade deficit will disappear, too. And then there will be less money in D.C. to fund lawfare and corruption. Win-win.
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