The CRTC today released two consultation notices that could result in big changes to Canadian broadcasting and telecom privacy. The broadcasting consultation proposes a major change to spending on Canadian English television productions, which has been flat compared to regular increases for spending on U.S. programming. The CRTC puts forward the possibility of a one-to-one ratio – for every dollar spent on foreign programming, one dollar must be spent on Canadian programming. The broadcasters will undoubtedly strongly oppose the proposal, relying on their longstanding argument that foreign programming "subsidizes" Canadian programming.
Meanwhile, the CRTC is also seeking comment on possible changes to the many telecom privacy provisions currently contained in the Telecommunications Act. The Commission points to the privacy safeguards, but asks whether they remain appropriate given the goverment's commitment to market forces. In other words, the CRTC incredibly asks whether market forces will provide similar privacy protections as those currently found in the statute. The deadline for responding to the privacy questions is March 16th.
Slight correction re: privacy
No, the CRTC is not seeking comment on changes to the telecom privacy provisions contained in the Telecommunications Act. It does not have the power to do that. Rather, it is seeking comment on the telecom provisions it has adopted pursuant to the Act — something it does have the power to do and, indeed, has been ordered by Cabinet to do.
CRTC is a joke
1st off he said POSSIBLE changes, aka they would then send that to thre overlord PC govt to adopt,.
AND what really is oging on is hte sneaky pete routine to back end us all and lose all our rights in one fell swoop.
Like while every major country in the civilized world takes off into warp speed were still being traffic shaped.
So what bell and rogers are saying is that the number of people signing up to internet accounts is so many that they cant increase capacity fast enough?
and hows htat lawsuit about the breach of that 5 megabit internet unlimited that i signed onto for 3 years in 2006, going.
2nd as to CRTC and privacy WHAT a joke, if they were on the peoples side they’d be smacking isps and any govt willing tohand over your data without a warrant.
remember you wont know abou tthat warrant until later and at least then you can have redress for when they are wrong and know who to sue when it falls into the wrong hands.
That data is your economic livlihood. It is also your life. The state is taking it away from you.
Ya know EH. That slowly people are waking up to the scams all these bone heads have been doing and its gonna get messy later on when it all unravels that all this money they STOLE form us DID NOTHING.
Watch Out – This is now the final act, where we permanently lose all of our privacy…
Another farce. The CRTC does not care about our privacy. In fact the CRTC itself has used invasion of privacy as a weapon of intimidation against those who dare speak out in favour of privacy.
You can find documented evidence on our website at: CanadaDNCL
One particular example involves the CRTC’s having published our representative’s personal information on a Government of Canada website, on the list of interested parties to Telecom PN2007-15, despite our explicit written prohibition against doing so. The CRTC’s deliberate and malicious violation of PIPEDA directly resulted in a denial of service attack against our representative’s personal telephone line, in all likelihood, by members of the telemarketing industry. The denial of service attack is documented in Halton Police Occurrence 06-36608. We were unable to determine the identities of the perpetrators of the attack, despite our successful (and very expensive) call traces. The Halton Police stated, in writing, that the telephone company “refused to co-operate” in the investigation.
Invasion of privacy is nothing new for the CRTC. Wantonly hawking uncontrolled and untraceable copies of the DNCL database, containing Canadians’ confidential unlisted and cell phone numbers, is just another glaring example.
In their determined haste to suppress the evidence and give the large telemarketers exactly what they demanded, the CRTC also routinely used intimidation tactics. These tactics include allowing the telemarketing industry representatives, in at least seven separate instances, to refer to Canadian citizens who object to telemarketing as “tele-terrorists”. This was followed by the CRTC’s National Commissioner, James Stuart Langford, himself, dropping the prefix, and referring to us simply as “terrorists”. (Our website provides links to the evidence of this hate crime which is still visible on the CRTC’s website.)
Commissioner Langford seems to have had a change of heart since his early and untainted days as “The Commissioner Who Doesn’t Do Lunch” with lobbyists. We wonder why…
During the course of Telecom PN2008-14, there is a documented example of a telephone company hiring a former CRTC commissioner in the midst of the proceedings, and that telephone company then receiving favoured treatment. In their ensuing Decision, the CRTC not only considered, but also quoted several of that telephone company’s submissions, despite those submissions had been served substantially after the deadline specified in the CRTC Rules of Procedure. The telephone company seems to have done nothing illegal. We’ve been conditioned to accept that massive corporations will do the best they can for their shareholders (or in other notable cases, their executives at the expense of their shareholders, but that’s a whole other story of a corrupt provincial securities regulator…)
As the ones who “paid the freight” to build the telecom infrastructure, we have a right to expect that the CRTC will impartially, honestly, and respectfully balance corporate interests against those of individual Canadians. They have FAILED MISERABLY AND CONTINUE TO DO SO. The CRTC is corrupt to the core, and is now demonstrably acting as a puppet of industry and certain politicians who favour a police state over an open democracy. Canada is rapidly becoming a backwater of democracy, and the CRTC is a festering cesspool within that backwater.
Link
http://home.cogeco.ca/~publicnotice/CanadaDNCL.html