The federal government in Ottawa is convening a panel to examine ways of lowering the price of mobile phone plans and force streaming services to fund Canadian content.
The panel of “experts” will spend the next year and a half studying Canada’s broadcasting and telecommunications industries with a view to modernizing regulations and responding to growing concerns about an uneven playing field between domestic service providers and foreign-based online streaming companies such as Netflix and Spotify.
The panel will craft recommendations on a new mandate for CBC/Radio-Canada while preserving the public broadcaster’s funding. It will also revamp the role and powers of the national broadcast regulator and focus on net neutrality, say the panel's terms of reference posted to on the federal government’s website Tuesday.
The mandate for the seven-member panel also says that the decades-old regulatory regime is unsustainable in the digital age, as Canadians more and more are turning to streaming platforms for content. Last week, Canada’s broadcast regulator said that Internet video and music services must pay to help save Canadian content – though the federal government has, to date, rejected such assertions.
However, on telecommunications rules, the government has asked the panel to recommend changes that promote competition in a sector with a high degree of concentration in order to reduce the consumer costs.
The panel will have 18 months to complete its work and is required to provide an interim report to the government next June. The timeline for a final report means detailed legislative recommendations will not arrive until weeks after the next federal election in October 2019 — ensuring the interim report, among others recently presented to the government, will likely make internet and Netflix taxes upcoming election issues.
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