As a kid, I never really liked the last week of August. The end of August meant the end of summer vacation, long drives back from family visits to the East Coast, teary goodbyes.

The start of school seemed to always include an assignment to write down what we did on our summer vacations.

Well, here we are.

It’s the last week before Labour Day. I have a lot to write about for that first school assignment.

Despite the crazy mess at Toronto’s airport, I managed to have extended visits with my kids and grandkids from far and farther, and that certainly tops my list of accomplishments. Despite the frequent video chats between live visits, there really is nothing like sitting together quietly on a dock fishing, or spoiling the little ones with visits to the bakery for rainbow bagels, or excursions by boat for ice cream.

Everything else this summer takes a distant back seat to the joy of quality in-person time together after a 3 year absence.

Still, I got an awful lot done, most of which found its way into earlier blog posts and some has been amplified in the general press.

There are various calls for an inquiry into the Anti-Racism Action Program and how it came to fund an organization so intertwined with a consultant with a pattern of “antisemitic comments” characterized as “reprehensible and vile.”

There are longer term issues to be explored that are related to this incident. As I indicated last week, The CRTC and its Broadcast Participation Fund shovelled more than half a million dollars to CMAC over the past 6 years. We have not yet seen the 2022 report to learn what was claimed and awarded in the past 12 months.

The CRTC might want to revisit the appropriateness of not allowing public comment on some of its cost awards, comment that may have challenged the appropriateness of the CRTC’s generous $225 per hour funding. It seems certain that the CRTC and the Broadcast Participation Fund will need to take a closer look at the public interest groups who are recipients of cost awards to ensure Canadians are comfortable with how public money is being distributed.

But in my view, the biggest impact will be the complete loss of credibility for Canadian Heritage to attempt to introduce regulation of online harms. A Liberal Member of Parliament made Ministers in the department aware of the potentially embarrassing contract last month – in mid-July. Nothing was done for more than a month about what the Minister now calls “antisemitic and xenophobic statements”. A department that couldn’t react in a timely way to “reprehensible and vile” statements made on a single platform (Twitter) by one of their own paid consultants has little credibility to introduce legislation seeking regulatory oversight of all online content in Canada.

Just a few weeks before the Minister was quoted in a press release with him, Laith Marouf tweeted, “Nothing is more harmful to any decolonisation movements [sic] in the world, especially Palestine, than Jewish White Boys/Girls. In my opinion, allowing them any space in our struggle is dependent on their complete abandonment of personal opinion & only parroting Palestinian voices.”

If only the Minister’s communications staff had access to a Google search bar.

The online harms bill is effectively dead. But, don’t blame Laith Marouf. This key piece of the Liberal Government’s digital plan was a victim of indifference and inaction in the department responsible for the impugned Anti-Racism Action Program.

Last week, Rex Murphy wrote:

No one could use the language, express the contempt and rage on Twitter about any other so-called “marginalized” group with even one-tenth of the ferocity that Marouf used in reference to “Zionists,” as he did for years, with reference to Jews and Israel, and not be called out, shamed and, yes, cancelled.

My point: Slander, insults and actual hate against Jews gets a pass — until some truly extreme example calls attention to it. Try referencing any “marginalized” group as “bags of feces” and see how long any journalist, politician or ordinary citizen would last.

A year ago, an antisemitic outburst from a university professor was allowed to slide with barely a wrist slap. The school likely didn’t want to have the incident impact a multi-million dollar grant announced a few weeks later.

In my part of Ontario, overall it was a great summer. The long range forecast is suggesting that it should be starting to get uncomfortable for some early this fall.

And, that is what I did for my summer vacation. What did you do?

The story of the government engaging an anti-racism consultant with a history of “disturbing comments” has been chronicled here for more than a year (see: July 2021: Funding Hate; April 2022: Purveying hate on the public dime; and, Government funded hate speech). Thanks to amplification from Jonathan Kay’s twitter feed, the story has made its way into the mainstream media, leading (at last) to a government response.

As I wrote last week, the government (and even some opposition members) knew about the problem much earlier, but did not act until the matter became a more public priority. The reasons for this inaction can be the subject of further investigation by the Parliamentary Heritage Committee, or others.

While the focus these past couple weeks has been on the Anti-racism Action Program funding, some may want to explore the ease by which “public interest” groups, such as the one under the microscope, can feed at various troughs of cash in Ottawa.

I raised questions in July of 2021 about a CRTC award of $16,815.10 to CMAC in May of that year. The CRTC awarded an additional $15,332.48 a few months later (October 2021), paring back CMAC’s original request by $2000 “in order to be considered reasonable and necessarily incurred”. In each case, all but $2069.55 (paid to another CMAC consultant) was claimed by Laith Marouf.

In addition, the Broadcast Participation Fund (BPF) represents a pot of cash available to groups since its establishment by the CRTC in 2012. According to the CRTC, the mandate of the BPF is:

• provide costs support to public interest groups and consumer groups representing non-commercial user interests and the public interest before the CRTC in broadcasting matters under the Broadcasting Act;
• support research, analysis and advocacy in both official languages directly related to ongoing CRTC broadcasting proceedings under the Broadcasting Act;
• retain an independent costing officer who shall be responsible for the day-to-day operations of the BPF subject to the overriding authority of the Board; and
• do all things which are in furtherance of the foregoing.

The BPF hands out a lot of cash to public interest groups, totalling just under $900,000 in 2021 alone. Of that total, CMAC received $144,480.44 or more than 15% of the 2021 allocations. There was another $57K granted in 2020; $89K in 2019; $41K in 2018; $88K in 2017; and, $98K in 2016.

That is more than half a million dollars to CMAC over the last 6 years, just from one Ottawa-based fund doling out your money.

The same groups show up on the lists year after year, similar to names of organizations receiving cost awards directly from the CRTC in telecom proceedings.

Who qualifies for funding?

In Telecom and Broadcasting Notice of Consultation 2020-124-2, the Commission stated the following:

15. […] Eligibility for a share of these funds will be evaluated according to the criteria set out in section 68 of the Rules of Procedure, namely

• whether the applicant had, or was the representative of a group or a class of subscribers that had, an interest in the outcome of the proceeding;
• the extent to which the applicant assisted the Commission in developing a better understanding of the matters that were considered; and
• whether the applicant participated in the proceeding in a responsible way.

Should the third criteria, “participating in a responsible way”, include an examination of the character and behaviour of the people involved in the applicant? Is the credibility of the applicant impacted by their character and does that impact the ability to participate in a responsible way?

To whom do these public interest groups answer? Who do these groups actually represent? What due diligence is performed by the guardians of the public funds?

As I highlighted last year, in one set of cost awards, the CRTC didn’t even allow people to provide comments about the cost applications, comments that might have helped inform the Commission of concerns about the recipients of these funds; “the Commission considered that such responses were unnecessary.”

It turns out, that was a bad call.

These various programs and funds have been established with the best of intentions. Unfortunately, there are often unintended consequences that arise from opportunities to access “other people’s money”.

Are the people distributing public funds exercising sufficient checks before disbursing money from these troughs of cash?

Is re-imagined competition law the answer to concerns about Big Tech getting to be just too big?

That is the subject of an upcoming webinar hosted by the International Telecommunications Society (ITS). In a recent LinkedIn post, Stephen Schmidt, Vice-President Telecom Policy & Chief Regulatory Legal Counsel at TELUS, and Chair of ITS, writes:

Over the past decade, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft have become the most valuable companies on the planet. These platforms have transformed our economic and social lives, enabling e-commerce, teleworking, video streaming, virtual healthcare, and more. Notwithstanding these benefits, this meteoric rise has raised concerns that Big Tech has become too big.

He asks if competition law, applied to Big Tech, might be a way to protect consumer privacy, enforce data protection, and ensure freedom of expression.

To that end, on September 15 now rescheduled to take place on October 20 at 10am (Eastern), ITS will host Big Digital Tech and the International Application of Competition Law. Registration is free.

Dr. Robert Picard, a senior fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford, will consider the potential and trade-offs for applying competition law to control big tech. Professor Picard is considered to be a world-leading specialist on media economics and government media policies. Drawing on global experience and international variations in the application of competition law, the webinar will consider mechanisms for intervention, overlaps with other areas of regulations, and possible obstacles to a more ambitious use of competition law to promote and protect digital rights.

As I have highlighted before, I have taken advantage of continuing education opportunities from the International Telecommunications Society, and I have promoted many of these webinars on these pages. ITS serves as “a global platform for industry, policy makers and regulators to create a 360-degree view of an issue from the perspective of different regions and jurisdictions.”

I hope to see you at the September 15 session.

I think people have a right to be offensive. I have said that before. I get very concerned about this government’s plans to introduce legislation to deal with hurtful speech on the internet.

As I have written before, support for concepts like “Freedom of Expression” and “Freedom of Peaceful Assembly” is easy when you agree with what is being said. But how do we deal with dissent and with controversial points of view? How do we distinguish between language that is offensive but hasn’t crossed the line to be illegal?

However, there can be consequences that might arise from speech that is offensive yet legal.

Those consequences can vary depending on the speaker’s role or public status. We hold different people to different standards. We have heightened expectations of politicians and celebrities.

Over the past few days, questions have been raised about a hateful and hurtful language used by a consultant engaged by Canada’s Anti-Racism Action Program. I have been writing about my concerns with his association with this government-funding program since last April (See: “Purveying hate on the public dime” and “Government funded hate speech”)..

As a result of extensive amplification of my concerns by Jonathan Kay, this issue has finally attracted such sufficient public attention that the Minister who awarded the funding could no longer ignore calls for a review.

Let’s be clear: The government had been aware of this issue for months and made no acknowledgment of the problem, as if it hoped the matter would just go away.

If this individual was just a garden-variety antisemite, he might have been able to continue to spew vile comments about Jews and French Canadians in the obscurity that he so richly deserves. But he was a beneficiary of the largesse of Canadian taxpayers, and as a result, is subjected to certain behavioural expectations. Most Canadians wouldn’t expect antisemitic rants to regularly appear from government-funded anti-racism consultants working on an anti-racism program.

I suspect most Canadians would expect consequences to arise for a government-funded purveyor of hateful and hurtful online commentary.

Will this impact the overall credibility of the government’s Anti-Racism Action Program?

There are indeed consequences associated with testing the limits of speech freedoms.

The latest Bank of America Global Wireless Matrix (July 15, 2022) provides more evidence that Canada’s mobile market is among the least concentrated in the developed world.

Recall that just a few weeks ago I wrote that the Inclusive Internet Index from the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked Canada’s wireless market as the 90th of 100 countries in concentration, measured using the Hirschman-Herfindahl Index (HHI). According to Bank of America Global Research, Canada’s wireless HHI ranks 3rd lowest among the 20 developed economies.

These 2 recent authoritative reports from BofA and The Economist should make people challenge populist claims that “Canada’s mobile wireless markets feature persistently high levels of concentration”.

“Persistently high levels” compared to what? It is misleading to say that Canadian wireless markets feature high level of concentration without providing context. Many capital intensive industries, including telecom, are highly concentrated. It should be important to examine Canada’s wireless HHI relative to the HHI found in other countries.

Quite simply, those who imply that Canadian wireless is more concentrated than other countries are misrepresenting the facts. The data clearly shows that Canadian telecom ranks among the least concentrated in the world.