Perish the thought:
Sensing a competitor in the marketplace, MusiquePlus objected to the AUX TV application, arguing the proposed programming would be directly competitive with its existing service. Avoiding direct competition has been a cornerstone of CRTC policy for many years, but it has typically been willing to define new offerings flexibly to allow for new entrants.
[…]
Despite a clear opportunity in the Quebec market and a comparable service in English, the commission rejected the application, offering a terse opinion that AUX TV would compete with MusiquePlus and that it was “not convinced that the safeguards presented in the application are sufficient to eliminate this risk.”
The risk being that the established firm, MusiquePlus, might have to, you know, compete against other firms offering a similar product. Like producers of detergent, hand soap, software, computers, fruit, petroleum, cell phones and even the televisions themselves. In modern Canada you can choose from a wide variety of flatscreen, wall mounted home theatre systems, equipped with wall shattering speakers, yet the actual content beaming out of those screens and speakers is regulated by a Trudeau-era relic of central planning.
The original rationale for the CRTC, and its forerunner the Board of Broadcast Governors, was to defend Canadian culture from the American menace. Put in nationalist tones it seemed to be a no-brainer. Just as Sir John A had defended the nascent Canadian manufacturing industry from American economies of scale, so broadcast regulation would allow Canadian culture to flourish. Taken out of the context of fervid nationalistic rhetoric, the argument for broadcast regulation appears as stark nonsense. Culture is not some floating abstraction, it is made up of the manners, mores and beliefs of a large group of people. The state does not create culture, since culture is the creation of artists and intellectuals who make it and the wider society who consume it. The second part is vital. What makes something culture is the acceptance of it by a critical mass of the population. The CRTC basically says you can skip the second part. A collection of government favoured cultural producers will tell Canadians what their culture is. What Canadians actually want is a secondary concern.
Given a choice between a contemporary American product, say Kojak, and its CanCon rival, the King of Kensington, Canadians viewers choose Telly Savalas sucking a lollipop. It might be American produced, American directed and American financed, but Canadians glued their eye balls willing to a middle aged bald man who every week said "Who loves ya baby?" Culture is what people decide is culture. It's a definition that changes over time and incorporates products of other nations. Those parts of American culture that are accepted by Canadians are Canadian culture, they are not some hostile army ready to undermine Queen and Country.
The one voice of sanity on the CRTC was the Quebec representative, Michel Morin, who dissented with the flourish: "Bring on competition as far as I am concerned!" First Maxime Bernier, now Michel Morin, a member of the CRTC no less. This remarkable outbreak of free thought, especially in a province whose politics can be characterized as Balkan tribalism sans firearms, is both surprising and welcome. Here's to hoping that all this Trudeaupian heresy spreads to Ottawa and into the PMO.
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