The Telecom Policy Review panel report weighed in on many issues, including Net Neutrality. While it seeks to allow the marketplace to be able to settle many such consumer issues, the report suggests that the regulator be able to intervene.
The Panel believes in most cases network operators and ISPs will have little or no incentive to interfere with customer access. However, open access is of such overriding importance that its protection justifies giving the regulator the power to review cases involving blocking access to applications and content and significant, deliberate degradation of service.
The report seems to balance the interests of consumers to have open access with economic realities of ISPs that do not have infinite capacity to provide wide open access to everybody all the time.
While the report acknowledges that certain illegal content should be able to be blocked, its resolution: “the Panel believes that blocking access to content and applications should not be permitted unless legally required.” In practice, it is unclear how this would be operationalized. In order to block illegal child exploitation images, would a separate court order be required for each instance or could a Canadian version of Internet Watch Foundation or other tribunals such as the Canadian Human Rights Commission be legally empowered to create a list of illegal content?