I noticed that Industry Canada has shut down the Telecom Policy Review Panel website, although the panel’s full report is still available for download as a pdf [1.65 MB]. Sure, the report is now more than 5 years old, but many of its recommendations have yet to be implemented, due to partisan bickering in a minority government environment.
The CCTS is one of the most visible recommendations actually completed: the establishment of a Telecommunications Consumer Agency [Recommendation 6-2].
It is unfortunate that more of the report was not adopted; there was a McCarthy Tetrault released a book at The 2007 Canadian Telecom Summit that details the complete set of legislative reforms needed to implement the recommendations.
The TPR panel was created by a Liberal government; its work was completed and the report was delivered to Conservative Industry Minister Bernier. Naively perhaps, I was optimistic that a spirit of bipartisanship might allow us to modernize Canadian telecom policy despite the minority government. I can’t help but think of the number of issues that would have been preempted had the proposals been adopted.
There is an opportunity to do more.
Section 9 of the report looks at regulatory institutions, including an examination of the number of CRTC Commissioners and the way to recruit and retain them. Recommendation 9-6 calls for a reduction to 5 from the current 13 Commissioners; Recommendations 9-7, 9-8 and 9-9 deal with recruitment methods and compensation. There are a number of CRTC appointments to be made over the next twelve months, as current terms expire. The next year may be the most opportune time for a restructuring to take place.
In any case, Recommendation 9-4 called for creating a new panel around this time:
The Minister of Industry should be mandated by legislation to undertake a comprehensive review of telecommunications policy and regulation every five years.
It has been just over five years since the last panel completed its work. Perhaps it is time for a fresh look, as long as we don’t end up with another book that sits on the shelf.