A very Canadian approach: How net neutrality rules reflect a country's true nature

Zero rating? No thanks

As another policy observer, Michael Geist, points out: the CRTC directly addresses the possibility of zero rating for Canadian content and, despite having the mandate and desire to do so, decides that it won't allow it.

"The creation, support, and discoverability of programming made by Canadians underscore many of the policy objectives set out in subsection 3(1) of the Broadcasting Act," it notes in the ruling. "Those objectives could be supported by differential pricing practices that would make that content available on Internet platforms in an easy and inexpensive way. However, the conception and implementation of such practices would be problematic for the same reasons that differential pricing practices based on content categories would pose a problem."

In other words: we could allow it but we'd be being hypocritical if we did.

In essence, the ruling takes a principled stance on the issue of content and decides not to allow the persuasive and powerful internet providers to use their positions as gatekeepers to their customers to put a bouncer at the door. It is the internet as public square rather than private building.

As Winseck notes, there is an enormous amount of pressure coming from both business and now the US government to view things differently.

"Avoid getting sucked into Trump's vortex," he pleads in his post, noting that Trump's FCC advisors are all strongly against net neutrality. "They have been leading the charge in the US and worldwide to roll back the successes that have been chalked up in recent years for common carriage, competition and people's rights as citizens and consumers."

He notes that one Trump advisor wrote to the CTRC pushing her view and another was paid by Facebook to write a piece pointing out why zero rating was great. And he notes that those ideas "have been imported into Canada and put onto the public record of CRTC proceeding by Telus and Bell, and made part of the broader discussion by the same and other industry cheer-leading consultants."

Winseck also makes some powerful points about the impact of zero-rating: those offering these "free" services charge more and have smaller data caps than services that don't offer them at all. In other words, you still pay for it but you lose transparency and choice.

Harsh realities

There remain some harsh realities however. As Winseck points out, Canada has an unusually tightly controlled content and access market with just a few large companies in charge of both what people see and how they see it.

Due to that reality, a strong net neutrality position makes sense. It may make less sense in the broader content market in the United States and Europe.

And then of course there are the companies and industries on both sides of the US-Canada border that do not like having their influence curtailed. Not to mention the Trump Administration and the chair of the US federal telecom regulator.

The blowback has only just started, from Rogers' former vice-president Ken Engelhart who claims that the new rules will limit Canada's innovation, to "telecommunications consultant" Mark Goldberg tweeting wildly about the damage the rules will cause (and stacking the industry conference he runs with critics of the rules).

That's the Canadians. Wait until the Americans – who are in the ascendency right now – get their bile flowing. Trump advisor Jeff Eisenach is currently busy attacking fellow American Susan Crawford for daring to suggest that cable companies might be ripping consumers off. Wait until word gets to him that zero-rating has been shut down north of the border.

In short, Canada has internet rules that reflect its personality: reasonable, fair and no-nonsense. And the United States is going to do its absolute best to point out why that is a stupid way of doing things: what you need is free markets, go-getting corporations and innovation up the wazoo. Such has it always been. ®