Imagine finding yourself in a sticky situation such as this. Your bank manager, Mr. von Freermarket, calls you up to say he wants to raise the service fees you pay in order to embark on this-and-that development initiative – all to serve you better, naturally. He’s putting in for an operating budget increase of, say, 19%, and he needs to take your input to his department head – you know, to help make his case.

But what if you don’t happen to share his enthusiasm for these schemes? Furthermore, what if you believe that such a hike is exorbitant, and that you are paying enough in fees already, thankyouverymuch.

Thing is, you can’t really go in there guns blazing, because your mortgage with that very bank happens to be coming due in a few months.

How to handle?

This was pretty much the dilemma faced by the broadcasters, the BDUs and their brethren when the CRTC held roundtable discussions with its stakeholders last summer to pitch for an operating budget raise of 19% – a hike from about $46 million to $54 million per annum for three years and ‘on an ongoing basis thereafter,’ reviews notwithstanding. For the broadcasters and BDUs, that would shake down to an 18% Part I Licence Fee climb, from $28 million to $32.5 million per year. The stakeholders’ comments at the consultations were recorded under ‘Chatham House rules,’ meaning the discussion was on the record, but individual comments were not attributed.

The resulting ‘Outcomes Report,’ submitted in August to the Treasury Board – a cabinet committee of six MPs whose jurisprudence includes the CRTC’s budget – indicates that the broadcasters waffled for all they were worth.

The CAB said broadcasters couldn’t reach a consensus, and therefore could not support an increase. And while some of the BDUs expressed support for a short-term increase, they also grumped that they ‘are neither the cause nor the beneficiary of some of the CRTC’s key pressure points – e.g. telecom deregulation and mega-mergers among broadcasting programmers – and therefore should not bear the burden of increased costs to the CRTC as a result of this added workload.’

And who can blame them for sidestepping the issue? They were looking down the barrel of the CTF overhaul, upcoming BDU hearings and broadcast licence renewals.

According to a source familiar with the situation, the CAB actually went further than that, circumventing the CRTC roundtable process by writing a letter expressing more frankly the industry’s opposition to the proposed raise. The letter was sent to Canadian Heritage and Industry Canada, and Treasury Board president Vic Toews was copied – but CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein was not. And as those who heard him deliver a speech at the recent CAB convention can attest, von Finckenstein was mad as hell about it.

‘We can’t get anywhere when there are confusing or conflicting messages coming from your organization, particularly with the CAB expressing different views to ministers than to the CRTC,’ he fumed. He then went on to chastise a roomful of broadcasting executives as though they were naughty schoolchildren. ‘I trust the incident of the fee payer consultation was an isolated instance that will not be repeated.’

One might suggest that the tone of von Finckenstein’s speech and the forum at which he chose to deliver it was a bit heavy-handed. ‘A regulator cannot successfully carry out its responsibilities without the understanding and support of those who are regulated,’ he said. ‘And those who are regulated will have a very tough time doing business if they can’t rely on the understanding and support of the regulator.’

Now, I am not suggesting that von Finckenstein or anyone else did anything untoward. What I am saying is this: What?! Neither the broadcasters nor the BDUs or their associations have an independent means by which to express their concerns about the funding – out of their pockets – of the body upon which they depend as the overseer of their businesses? This is an elephant in the living room. It’s un-Canadian. How can this be?

Here’s how. You may have noticed that no one is quoted in this column. No one at the CAB, the CRTC, the Treasury Board nor any of the broadcasters or BDUs contacted would speak on the record, or even be quoted off-the-record.

And so, all we have to go on is the CRTC’s Outcomes Report (which the Treasury Board has yet to respond to) and von Finckenstein’s speech. Regarding the latter, we must be grateful to von Finckenstein, as always, for speaking his mind. It appears that he is the only one who feels free to do so.