Telecom Trends

Having been the commenter who asked why the Conservatives opposed the INDU Committee conducting an "in-depth study of telecom deregulation", I'd like to respond to today's entry titled "Talk, talk, talk". As will be seen below, what was being proposed by the members of the opposition parties, who were upset that Mr. Bernier chose to ignore a motion of the Committee regarding the implementation of his first Order to the CRTC announced last year at the Telecom Summit, was just a month-long study of telecom deregulation specifically in the context of the choices Mr. Bernier and the government made regarding how telecom deregulation was going to unfold in Canada. No one was proposing a repeat of all the work done by the TPRP (again, see below).

Your response to my comments assumes that the TPRP got it all right, that there is no better way than the way they recommneded. I think that will always be debatable. I'm sure you'll admit that when there are policy options and one chooses one course of action, there will always be debate as to whether or not the choice made was the best one. Granted the panel was made up of experts, but I'm sure that if you put another expert panel together to look at the same issues they wouldn't necessarily come up with all the same answers as the TPRP did.

The sense I get from the evidence (detailed minutes) of the Industry Committee's session on January 29th was that most of the non-Conservative members of the Committee believe the minister made the wrong choice in choosing, among other things, the tests he did for determining if there is sufficient competition in a market to warrant forebearance and they wanted to debate it with the minister himself and stakeholders.

The following statements by the Liberal vice-chair of the INDU Committee, Dan McTeague seem to best summarize what the opposition parties had in mind:

"I'm concerned.....that we don't want to see a re-monopolization of the sector. There's plenty of experience in the United States to suggest that if you go without a proper test or an analysis of what constitutes the current market, then you're rushing ahead, and I'm not exactly sure how that haste would identify itself. But I am also concerned about the competition presence test that....(the) minister has put forward. It's inconsistent, obviously, with competition law principles as understood and applied both in Canada and abroad.....So I would draw your attention to some of the commentaries that have been made. You don't have to agree with them, and we can all suggest there is reason for Canadians to be concerned, but in my view, the structured rule-of-reason tests set out by the Competition Act--and the Competition Bureau (that)has been used in many cases in the past--should be the standard that your minister has set aside and avoided. What I think we're trying to accomplish here--and I would hope we are able to do so in the month we're able to study this--is to find out specifically where witnesses will come from. I'd like to hear from members of the (TPR) panel review. Obviously they can determine for you....whether or not what the minister has declared, what the minister has put forward in a proposal, which I thought he was going to leave off for a little while, is correct.....I'm really concerned about the reality of this market. We've seen success from the CRTC as they've brought more competition in areas like long distance. Unfortunately,....you'll probably have to agree that in the area of local telephony, we are not at that point yet, especially when many of the new competitors rely on the major carriers to form a monopoly to provide their product. Chair, with that in mind, I've enunciated half a dozen concerns that I think are legitimate, that are in the public domain. If we're going to begin the assertion--and I respect what you have to say, but I don't see how it adds up. If we have violated three or four key recommendations of the telecommunications policy review panel, then I think we are duty bound to ensure that that is in fact found back in the order."

So, there seems to be some doubt about the Minister's choices. Better to debate them now for just one month, before taking action, than have to clean up the pieces later on.