Shill games

Antonia Zerbisias writes that a new task force is being set up to review the Canadian Television Fund - and that the Cons don't appear to be letting either laws or basic fairness stand in the way of their efforts to cater to cable companies:

In a terse news release last Tuesday, the CRTC announced that its newly created CTF task force would "develop a consensus to resolve the concerns raised by stakeholders or, failing that, to set out possible options to resolve any remaining issues.

"The task force will make its final report public. If it is required or deemed advisable based on this report, the commission will then issue a public notice and hold a hearing."

The task force will consist of one commissioner, broadcast vice-chair Michel Arpin,plus three CRTC staffers. It will meet behind closed doors so as not to risk, in the words of newly appointed CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein, "imperilling the commercial relations" of the interested parties.

In fact, there will be no input except from industry stakeholders – even though the public, which pays for this, is the biggest stakeholder group of all...

Just where does the CRTC have the authority under the law to hold a closed-door, one-member-only task force whose purpose is to achieve a resolution among a limited number of parties with commercial interests?

According to the Broadcasting Act, a panel must consist of no fewer than three full-time commissioners. This task force has only one, plus three bureaucrats.

When NDP MP Charlie Angus raised this last week during one of the Commons heritage committee meetings, von Finckenstein never really addressed the question...

Only after the task force report is delivered April 27 – and only if the issues aren't "resolved" – will the CRTC decide whether further input is necessary.

As von Finckenstein told the heritage committee last week, "If there is no consensus, the report will set out various options to resolve the concerns that have been expressed. At that point, based on the task force's findings, the commission will make a decision about whether it is necessary or desirable to issue a public notice and hold public hearings. If we were to go ahead with public hearings, we would expect to complete them by the end of August."

So why not cut the red tape and hold public hearings right away – unless the conclusion is foregone? Why the stall?

Zerbisias goes on to note that the new move to a closed-door process could set a dangerous precedent which could then be applied to future CRTC hearings, including ones involving planned media mergers. Which means that the absurdity of putting the decision solely in the hands of one extremely narrow set of interests could be just the beginning of a complete exclusion of the public from the CRTC's decision-marking process.

And sadly, that type of move only seems to fit all too well with the usual right-wing idea of a consultation process (as apparently applied in the negotiation of the TILMA among other issues):
(1) Ask the largest corporate interest involved in a policy area to draft the policy it would most like to see.
(2) Implement the policy developed in (1) without further discussion.

Needless to say, Canadians generally should expect better than to have their voices considered only if cable giants can't reach agreement on what they want done. And hopefully the apparent lack of legal authority underlying the task force will help to call into question the Cons' wider disinterest in input from anybody but corporate interests.

Update: Good news from the NDP, as Charlie Angus has managed to win committee approval for a recommendation that public hearings follow any CRTC report (among other more direct support for the CTF). Though it's of course anybody's guess whether the Cons will bother following the recommendations.