Blang!

Time and again, the Conservative government has demonstrated it is completely clueless when it comes to technology policy.

Case in point, one of the first things the Conservatives did was to ignore recommendations to lift foreign ownership restrictions in the telcom sector. That recommendation was originally in a report commissioned by the Liberals so instead of following it, they commissioned their own report which came to the same conclusion.

Having received the same recommendation from both Liberal and Conservative reports, they did the only logical thing and ignored(?) them both…

Instead, the Conservatives opted to plough head-on into “free” market disaster.

Foreign ownership can be a political hot-button in Canada so the Conservatives attempted to duck the issue by pressuring Industry Canada to approve the ownership structure of Globalive despite the fact it clearly didn’t meet the requirements.

This back-door decision making conveniently avoided the inevitable public discussion of foreign ownership policy and neatly ducked any political fallout. Problem avoided. Or so they thought…

Industry Canada can get away with making their decision in relative secrecy but the CRTC can not. The CRTC must issue its decisions publicly along with the accompanying rational and background information. So, faced with a complaint from the incumbent cell phone carriers, the CRTC had no choice but to conclude (correctly) that Globalive does not meet the ownership restrictions.

In the mean time, Globalive has spent hundreds of millions on spectrum and infrastructure.

So the government choices are now this:

1) Overrule the CRTC (again) resulting in:

a) A public dressing down of Industry Canada (for approving Globalive in the first place) and the CRTC (for not going along with the program).

b) A government admission that ignoring the recommendations to lift foreign ownership restrictions was bungling of the highest order.

c) A lawsuit by the incumbent telcoms (which they will win. After all, even if the Conservatives overrule the CRTC, Canadian law still states they must be Canadian owned).

2) Let the CRTC ruling stand resulting in:

a) A public dressing down of Industry Canada (for approving Globalive in the first place) and the CRTC (for not going along with the program).

b) A lawsuit by Globalive to recover their investment plus damages, a figure that could approach 1 Billion.

c) No real competition in the near future.

3) Change the law on foreign ownership resulting in:

a) See all above.

What a disaster. I can hardly wait to see what they do next.