— Musings —02.03.2011 04:54 PM
Clement kudos
Tony Clement – and the Grits and Dippers who beat him to the punch – deserves credit for putting the brakes on the CRTC’s inane decision to kill off competition for the fat cat cell phone companies.
Hear, hear, Mr. Speaker. Now, you still owe for that Franz Ferdinand ticket, Clement. Pay up.
The things coming out of the CRTC’s mouths is astounding! Gigahertz, IPTV isn’t internet, internet is like oil and utilities… No wonder these people just went ahead and let Bell do what they want.
The CRTC has the same chronic problem that so many regulatory agencies have — in legal circles, the buzzword for it is “regulatory capture”. The thing is, Bell, Telus, CTV et al., and especially their legal & regulatory personnel, spend countless hours every day dealing with the CRTC. It means that these people inevitably get close to the CRTC, become more knowledgeable about the CRTC regulatory process than anyone else does. Nobody knows the ins and outs of the CRTC process as well as, e.g., an in-house lawyer at Bell, Shaw or CTV — except for CRTC personnel themselves. And of course, often people go back and forth, from in-house counsel to the regulator and vice-versa.
So it’s no wonder that sometimes the result is that you get CRTC decisions that are awfully favourable to the entities that the CRTC is entrusted with regulating. That’s why I’m glad that there are appeals available to the federal cabinet and that our elected government has the power to veto those decisions. Because sometimes you will get a public outcry such as we’ve had here.
Play it anyway you want WK – all the average joe heard is that Harper and Clement want it stopped.
Sorry – but perception is everything as you know.
Don’t get too excited: at best it’ll just mean that a whole bunch of youngish folks who almost got motivated enough to decide to vote for the first time ever…. probably still won’t. But at worst, it’ll cause a lot more ‘real’ Conservatives to stay home due to yet another interventionist move by the supposed free-market party.
There is no “free-market party” in power right now, but instead a realistic and pragmatic Stephen Harper Party who want to stay in power. Self preservation is admirable and necessary. So, I am excited! This decision wins favor from both left parties and even WK!
I am a ‘real’ Conservative who will not stay at home! The ‘real’ Conservatives understand that.
Now is that a real poncho or is that a Sears poncho?
Look here brother,
Who you jivin’ with that ‘Conservative’ Debris?
Holy crap… there’s so much spin and bullshit, I’m having difficulty standing up straight.
These are the well documented facts : Marie-Stephen Antoinette operates in imperial fashion, whereby all appointments, mandates and decisions are made by him alone. Current CRTC commissioners, (some of whom, incidentally, have historic relationships with the media conglomerates supposedly they are regulating), were appointed during Mr. Harper’s tenure.
It follows logically therefore, that Mr. Harper knew full well what the CRTC’s “ruling” was going to be, prior to their announcement. It also follows that Mr. Clement had little to do with either that CRTC decision, or the decision to change it, supposedly, as the spin suggests, in response to the public’s outcry, virtually on the eve, we are further told, of Mr. Harper dropping a writ.
If that is correct, then this whole sordid orchestration needs to be exposed for the corruption of democracy that it is, rather than those whose job it is to call Mr. Harper to account simply acting as his enablers, through – on the part of opposition members, a trained seal performance due, apparently, to a lack of seriousness or courage, and on the part of the MSM, strict adherence to Mr. Harper’s talking points, because, evidently, j-schools only teach how to apply make-up, and read a scrip.
Sheila Copps or Brian Tobin would never have let this go unchallenged, nor would pre-convergence journalists.
Why is no-one asking the obvious question : if it’s actually good public policy NOT to have the three or four territorial media monopolies have absolute control of the nation’s eCommerce and information channels, then why did Mr. Harper’s CRTC appointees give it to them in the first place?
Thanks for this jStanton. The truth will out.
Wishful thinking.
As someone who is uniquely positioned to comment on this matter. let me just say Warren is correct, and jStanton is absolutley full of shit. Fiction at best; libel at worst. I am surprised this comment was even allowed to be posted.
Cheers,
Actually Warren, Minister Clements statements preceded the Liberals jumping aboard,
by almost 6 hours.
Reverse internet billing decision, Liberals say
Industry Minister Tony Clement says CTRC decision will be ‘studied carefully’
Last Updated: Monday, January 31, 2011 | 10:20 PM ET .
Ottawa enters dispute over higher Internet fees
Steven Chase, Iain Marlow
Ottawa, Toronto? From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail
Published Monday, Jan. 31, 2011 4:48PM EST
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-news/ottawa-enters-dispute-over-higher-internet-fees/article1889321/
You slay me
Pay no attention to Wilson. She lives in a bubble.
Gee, Wilson, isn’t it the least bit troublesome to your claim that the earlier of the articles on the 31st notes,
“Liberal industry critic Marc Garneau, who said he will pressure Mr. Clement to throw the decision back to the regulator, said he doesn’t buy the large providers’ arguments about Internet network traffic and congestion. ‘There’s more and more use,’ Mr. Garneau said. ‘But to some extent, it’s also self-serving as well. And in this case, the ruling of the CRTC has gone too much in favour of the arguments presented by the big players.’
Mr. Clement was careful not to take sides…”
And, um, isn’t the NDP’s release from Thu 20 Jan 2011 a whole lot earlier than when Tony suddenly got religion on this?
http://www.ndp.ca/press/canadians-lose-out-with-internet-metered-billing
wilson is used to those sorts of troublesome facts being redacted.
The CRTC approved this move in MAY 2010
the Dippers coming to the rescue of Canadian taxpayers 8 months later?
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/05/06/crtc-usage-based-billing-internet.html
Are you addled, in some way? Those two parties made the call earlier this week. Tony made his decision (on Twitter no less) two days later.
Wot? Why not settle for Plastic Bertrand?
Harper and the Provinces started pouring millions into upgrading broadband infrastruture,
the campagin started in July 2008.
I’ll bore you with only one link, each province has a link too.
Point is, the Harper govt policy dating back to 2008 is to expand internet usage and infrastructure,
Ignatieff also spoke of this being a Liberal policy,
and there was no way either party would support the CRTC ruling, no matter who got to a reporter first.
http://www.infc.gc.ca/media/news-nouvelles/csif-fcis/2009/20091203iqaluit-eng.html
Uh-huh. Except that merely wanting to increase access to broadband services (and doing very little on that score) isn’t at all the same as opposing users being billed for those services based on there level of usage.
And the fact is, something like 95% of broadband users in Canada already ARE on UBB plans with the 3 main providers, who have monthly caps and are subject to extra billing for going over that. And, um, Tony hasn’t done anything about that until now (and indeed, still hasn’t: he’s just said ‘Go review your decision, CRTC, and don’t come back with the same one’… which, um, only applies to that extra 5%.)
But knowing you, Wilson, if the bitter complaining that free marketers like Andrew Coyne & Kevin O’Leary & the ‘yet more bullying of independent regulators & civil servants just doing their jobs’ meme about this both gain more traction & starts costing the Cons votes, you’ll be coming back in a couple months saying, “It’s not the CPC’s fault: the coalition made them do it” (like you do on the deficit spending).
You’re a case study in connitive dissonance.