Private members bill on tower sharing voted down by government

The Conservative government voted down a private members' bill in Parliament to create a new tower sharing and consultation regime for wireless carriers. Bill C-429, tabled by NDP MP Sylvain Chicoine in June, was defeated Wednesday by a vote of 154 to 130 as the Conservatives voted against it. The NDP, Liberals, Green party, and Bloc Quebécois supported it. The bill would have amended the Radiocommunication Act and Telecommunications Act to establish a system for companies to apply to the CRTC for access to telecommunication towers and antennas. It would have also required telecom companies to hold a public consultation before constructing new towers. Industry Canada guidelines now require mobile carriers to take part in a public consultation before erecting a tower higher than 15 metres. In a phone interview this week before the bill was defeated, Chicoine, whose riding is Châteauguay-Saint-Constant, Que., said the idea for the bill came about in the fall of 2011 after new wireless entrant Public Mobile Inc. erected five new towers under 15 metres in height. He said the towers were put up in residential areas and some members of the community expressed health concerns. “They don't share, and there will be a lot of companies that are going to erect them in the next three years,” Chicoine said. Companies can rent space on their existing towers to other telecom carriers, he said. “It's possible to share, but they don't.” He said the bill would have given the CRTC the mandate to establish a tribunal to resolve potential disputes over tower sharing applications. In September, Conservative MP Terrence Young said he wanted to see changes to Health Canada's Safety Code 6, which sets out limits for human exposure to radio frequencies and electromagnetic fields like those from mobile towers, after constituents in his Oakville, Ont., riding expressed health concerns about new towers. Conservative MP Chris Alexander, the parliamentary secretary to the minister of national defence, said in a speech in Parliament in November that the government wants to further discuss the regulations surrounding tower siting, though Bill C-429 is not the right approach. “It would duplicate existing regulatory requirements. It would impose an additional regulatory and administrative burden on everyone without any discernable benefit,” Alexander said. “It would add red tape and this is obviously a challenge that our government has spent a lot of time trying to focus on. When government gets in the way of private enterprise, when government makes a sector less efficient or less productive, it affects everyone. It raises the costs of telecommunications and we do not want to allow that to happen any more than it already has,” he said. Alexander said the government favours tower sharing and that, since 2008, it has required all companies wanting to erect new towers to explore sharing. “They do not have the right to erect new structures if there is no good reason to do so,” Alexander said. As part of Industry Canada's proposed regulatory framework for the licensing of 700 MHz spectrum, the department has proposed new rules to facilitate the sharing of towers and sites and to prevent carriers from blocking other telecom companies' access to them. Jim Patrick, senior vice-president with the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA), said in an emailed statement that Bill C-429 contained some “unfortunate drafting errors” and was unnecessary in light of work that the CWTA and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) has conducted on the issue. The CWTA and FCM held a series of public discussions this year to develop a common protocol for tower siting across the country. He said that, according to the bill, a homeowner who wanted to install a direct-to-home satellite dish on their roof would be required to hold a public consultation, and that industry has now agreed a higher degree of communication with municipalities than the bill would have required. —With reporting by Simon Doyle at sdoyle@thewirereport.ca and editing by Nicholas Kyonka at nkyonka@thewirereport.ca news@thewirereport.ca

Private members bill on tower sharing voted down by government

News | 12/14/2012 7:07 pm EST

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