KING BLAIS’ SORRY REIGN.

It is with great sadness that we now observe the departure from office of the man who brought broadband to Canada. Had Jean- Pierre Blais not served these last five years as chairman of the Canadian Radio- television and Telecommunications Commission, Canada might today still be struggling with outdated technology, waiting for data like stranded passengers, waiting at the corner for a slow- moving busload of digital content to trundle its way over.

We were saved from this grim fate, we learned this week, by one man, Jean-Pierre Blais. He told us so himself during a speech on Tuesday — his last as chair of the CRTC — to the Banff World Media Festival. “What we did, in other words, was to help prepare Canada’s communications system for a future in which broadband is the ubiquitous technology. What we did, in still other words, was break the status quo.”

Blais boldly predicted that broadband is the future and the catalyst for change. “The future of audiovisual content and information is on fixed and mobile wireless broadband.” Who knew?

As the father of broadband in Canada, Blais — who is nothing if not self-aggrandizing — compared himself to another smasher of the status quo, Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, who (according to Blais) said “any business today that embraces the status quo as an operating principle is going to be on a death march.” The CRTC, said Blais, is also all about crushing the status quo, two words he used a mere 12 times in the advance copy his speech.

Some might say that, on the contrary, the CRTC was the status quo that was dragged kicking and screaming into the broadband era. Was it not the giant telcos that actually brought broadband technology to Canada, over land and water, investing billions in cable and fibre and wireless to deliver a communications revolution that has technically rendered the CRTC redundant?

Founded decades ago at a time of limited supply and technological bottlenecks — not much content, not enough wire-power — the CRTC continues its bureaucratic existence today on the theory that we need a state agency to protect consumers from too much content and too much broadband.

One is reluctant to quibble with Canada’s abdicating communications king, so sweeping and spectacular is the legacy he says he left behind. He complimented himself on having pioneered online CRTC discussion groups and other blatantly populist schemes that pandered to Reddit users and gave union- backed lobby groups such as OpenMedia a bigger platform.

Blais took credit for a $750-million CRTC fund to back up its declaration that broadband is a basic service entitlement due all Canadians. Where will the money come from? Out of the pockets of consumers who will pay higher fees to the big communications giants that Blais has routinely ridiculed as numb-skulled yacht owners.

Much of the speech was a rehash of themes Blais delivered in early 2016, only now they are more pointed and directed. Canada’s cultural industries received royal condescension. He compared filmmakers and broadcasters to subsidized 19th- century canal- boat operators facing steam engine competition. “I urge you,” said Blais to his Banff cultural audience, “Stop fussing over your canal boats. Stop arguing over this barnacle or that barnacle that’s stuck to your hulls.”

No wonder the Screen Actors Guild issued a statement following Blais’ speech saying he had “undermined Canadian storytellers instead of protecting them. We look forward to the appointment of a new Chair and new Commissioners who understand the challenges of the film and television sector, and the need to see Canadian stories on our screens.” Even when he’s right he gets it wrong.

In the end, on cultural issues, Blais fudged his way to a non- conclusion. “Maybe, just maybe, we’ve arrived in an era where government has to get out of the cultural sector’s way.” Then he threw the question up in the air, saying it is “something for discussion.”

While he claimed many successes, Blais failed to mention his assorted misadventures that still dog various parts of the industry.

He did not mention the commission’s bungled pick- andpay cable mandate that offers consumers program packages that are more skinnier yet more expensive. He did not mention his bungled wireless code that forced consumers into two-year contracts that drove up monthly fees for those paying for new phones. He did not mention his five-years of grandstanding at CRTC hearings.

Throughout his reign, Blais trumpeted the need for a fourth telecom carrier. To be fair, he was initially following orders from the Harper government. The idea should now be dead, with the conclusion of BCE’s takeover of Manitoba Telecom that was approved by the Trudeau government and the Competition Bureau.

Like many others in government, Blais remains fixed on the idea that competition in wireless can only be achieved with the addition — somehow — of new players. “Unless the current reality changes — if it ever does — Canada will always have a problem with high retail wireless prices.”

Sometime before his last day in office, Blais will announce a new wireless code that will supposedly provide consumers with improved prices and service. On the whole, though, Blais spent most of his five years blustering about fixing a problem that does not exist. Measuring wireless- price differentials among countries is a meaningless exercise that serves only to provide groups such as OpenMedia with populist talking points. Blais also did not mention two of the greatest potential spurs to possibly increased wireless competition: End foreign ownership rules and shut down the CRTC.

Canada’s broadband future, the wireless policy battle, net neutrality and other issues ultimately do not and should not rest with the CRTC or its next chair. Those are Ottawa’s job. In the future, Canadians would benefit most from a lot less CRTC.