I’ve been listening to the various financial reports from the major phone companies this week.

Am I the only one who is tired of these boilerplate ‘Safe Harbour’ notices at the beginning of almost every CEO / CFO presentation? On the screen for 2 seconds and then moving on.

I think we all understand the origins. I am sure that we can thank the same litigious law firms that led to McDonald’s putting a warning on their coffee cups saying ‘Contents may be hot’.

I love the phrasing in these Safe Harbour slides:

Translation into plain language? While we want you to listen to this, and pump up our stock price, don’t even think about holding us accountable. What is undue reliance? Is it reasonable to place any reliance on these statements? The message I took from Mark Cuban’s blog is that shareholders need to be more activist. Like reminding companies about who owns who. If shareholders are the owners, shouldn’t management be willing to stand behind the statements they are making?

Why doesn’t the McDonald’s coffee cup say ‘Warning: Contents are hot’? Because then lawyers would file suit in case the coffee ever cooled down. Commitment, folks. Where is the commitment?

Companies: Stop trying to cover your assets so broadly that your warnings are like labels on jars of trail mix, warning ‘May contain nuts’.

The jar better contain nuts – otherwise you’ll be hearing from my lawyer!

Interesting disclosure from Bob McFarlane, CFO of TELUS on the conference call today.

He said that TELUS has been playing catchup with Rogers in some areas of wireless applications because of Rogers’ use of GSM and the greater number of applications that exist for that platform. He noted the earlier availability of RIM Blackberry as an example.

We can argue about whether or not CDMA may be a better network technology, but what is clear is that consumers are more concerned about what they can do with the technology – not the inner workings themselves.

Look at Betamax as a great example.

My daughter is studying abroad this year. She made an interesting observation on her blog as she commented about a student on her campus that chose to ignore a minute of silence being observed in memory of the Holocaust. Rather than being outraged, she wrote:

It strikes me as an appropriate point to take away from this experience – and I am very proud that she understands such fundamentals.

In a strange way, her views tie into a concern raised by some of the questions in the telemarketing Do Not Call List proceeding today, especially those in relation to possible limits on when people can place calls.

I have a problem being called at certain times of day, but I also have the ability to turn off the ringer. If the CRTC wants to limit professional telemarketers, I’ll let those folks fight their own battle about how it limits their freedom of expression.

I was more concerned about the spectre of limitations of hours of calling being imposed on public opinion research firms. Their association was cross-examined about whether they would agree to conform to such rules if imposed.

Talk about being on the hot spot. When I was asked the same question on Tuesday (testifying on behalf of volunteer based charities, I was not happy about it. In my view, the question is along the lines of legislating etiquette. Of course we would like everyone to be polite, use the right fork and don’t call after 10 pm (or during the World Series or Super Bowl). But should this be regulated?

In my respectful view, this would be regulation for the sake of regulation. I think that government should have to prove why they need to create regulations – and more than just a survey that says X% of Canadians find telemarketing calls annoying. Duhh.

Did anyone tell them that the government defines your neighbour’s kid, or grandaughter calling to sell girl guide cookies as telemarketing? Are those the calls the public wants to shut down? Are we going to make it an offense under the Telecom Act because a kid calls to sell school dance tickets too late at night?

Or should we gently teach them how to be polite, without making it a federal issue.

How about a common sense approach? Do you really think that making it a crime to call after 10 will make a professional telemarketer stop, or will it be more effective to just hang-up on them? Common sense says that you don’t make lots of successful sales calls at 2 am.

In a democratic society, I think you have the right to be stupid, you have the right to be rude and we should try to teach telephone etiquette, not legislate it.

Just don’t call me Sunday nights in the middle of The West Wing, if you know what’s good for you. I’ll file a complaint at the CRTC.

I appreciate Alec Saunders bringing further attention to my travels on Tuesday. Many people are unaware of how broadly it is defined. The CRTC says that Telemarketing is:

Unfortunately, this definition means that when your school PTA, or kids’ hockey team, or scout troop calls you to tell you about their upcoming car wash, cookie sales, school play – these are ‘telemarketing’. If you want those calls banned, then you are more of a scrooge than Dickens could conjure.

When the seniors’ Golden Age club wants to notify their members about an outing to Stratford, that is telemarketing. Same as inviting them to Bingo next Thursday. Go ahead and think that, in your fantasy land, you can change the way that 80-year-olds communicate and you can get them to use viral marketing and Web 2.0 tools. Who is going to buy them their computers, pay for their training or tell them that the world has passed them by? Not me.

I’d like to be a little more practical and let people choose the communications tools they want to use and make sure that the regulatory framework is more permissive.

Let’s try to remember that the vast majority of telemarketing calls are positive experiences for three stakeholders: the caller, the recipient and the telecom carriers that provide the facilities and transport for the sector. It is your insurance agent calling you to tell you about new options for your home insurance renewal, your bank, your alumni association, your church, your ski club, your car dealer booking your next oil change. It even includes your kids calling grandma and their aunts and uncles to sponsor them in the school walk-a-thon.

By the way, unless your grade 3 class happens to have a registered tax number, Parliament didn’t grant them an exemption from having to first check the national do not call list. And even if they do have such a tax department break, if you read the phone companies submissions, they would have wanted you to first reprogram your home phone line to display ‘Riverdale School Walkathon’ before your kid started calling for sponsors, or selling gift wrap and chocolates.

With government cutbacks, it is the charitable and non-profit sector that supplements an ever-shrinking social safety net that we, as Canadian, cherish as a defining characteristic of our national moral fabric. Let’s not impose restrictions that unreasonably prevent charitable organizations from doing their job.

That is why I went to Ottawa on Tuesday. The transcripts will soon be posted. Let me know your thoughts.

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Update: [May 4, 2006]
The transcripts are now available.

I’ll be in Ottawa for the day today (May 2) for the CRTC’s hearings on the Telemarketing Do Not Call List proceeding. I am helping a charitable group try to ensure that things like school kids clubs don’t get captured under the new rules. While registered charities are exempted under the legislation, there are a few details that aren’t clear.

On the surface, most of us would love to stop those annoying calls for carpet and duct cleaning, driveway sealing or whatever. At the same time, we want to make sure that there are no impediments to good causes, like charities and their related organizations, having access to cost-effective methods for reaching out to the community.

It, like many issues, is a delicate balance.

Speaking of balance, I have spent the past few days gaining a better appreciation of more physical exertion. Between planting trees and moving kids in and out of their student homes, I have gained a better appreciation for my more sedentary life at the office.

There is a certain feeling of accomplishment that you gain by digging a hole, planting a tree and filling in the hole again. You start and finish in a short time period. Objectives can be defined, accomplished and easily measured. There is a sense of satisfaction and immediate gratification.

Kind of the same as usually found in the world of telecom policy and strategy development!