Ottawa handed revised Telecommunications Act

Recommendations from the Telecommunications Policy Review Panel (TPRP) have once again been brought into the spotlight, only this time it's proposed legislation to replace the current 14-year-old Telecommunications Act. Hank Intven, partner at McCarthy Tetrault LLP and former member of the TPRP, along with former associate deputy minister in the Department of Justice Mary Dawson, released a Model Telecommunications Act at the Canadian Telecom Summit in Toronto yesterday. "Our purpose in preparing and publishing a Model Act was simply to give the government, Parliament and other industry stakeholders, including consumer groups, some clear ideas on how one might start the difficult job of drafting new, comprehensive telecom legislation to implement the TPR Report," Intven said in a statement. The process to write a Model Act started only a few months after the TPRP released its recommendations. Bell Canada and Telus funded the writing of the Act, but according to Intven, had no hand in formulating the Model Act. The Model Act would formalize many of the recommendations of the panel including the creation of the Telecommunications Competition Tribunal (TCT) and the Telecommunications Consumer Agency (TCA). The TCT would ultimately become the body to deal with complaints of anti-competitive conduct, while the TCA would act as a consumer protection agency for consumer-related concerns. The creation of the TCA started earlier this year when Industry Minister Maxime Bernier called for its establishment in his decision to vary the CRTC's local forbearance regime. Although the Model Act will likely be welcomed by many in the industry, some have already expressed frustration that they weren't consulted on some manners. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) is one such group. During a media Q&A after the release of the Model Act, a representative from the city of Richmond BC and a member of the FCM's technical committee pressed Intven on two sections of the Model Act regarding access to municipal rights of way and public property. He expressed frustration over the changing of the wording in the Model Act to "public property" from "public place," maintaining the two have vastly different meanings and implications for municipalities. While it would now seem that the governing Conservative Party of Canada has just about everything it needs to begin the process of making legislative changes to the aging Telecommunications Act, the priority is perhaps in question given the political turmoil currently surrounding the federal government. Even if there is all-party support, passing a new Telecom Act is going to take a substantial amount of time: it took six years to prepare, debate and pass the current legislation.

Ottawa handed revised Telecommunications Act

News | June 13, 2007

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