Technology

Your cellphone plan is killing Canadian culture!

Every time you call your mom on a WIND phone plan, Joey Jeremiah cries

WIND mobile may be done-for in Canada; a Federal Court has ruled that because WIND’s parent company is backed by Egyptian investors, it violates Canada’s laws against foreigners owning our wireless spectrum.

This is bad news, right? After all, when WIND broke in Canada (high-five!) a whole new tier of affordable cell-phone plans popped up.  The entrance of one new player forced a correction in the entire market! Who could hate that?

ACTRA hates that. Stephen Waddell, the National Executive Director of the Canadian actor’s union, calls the anti-WIND ruling “a victory for culture!

WTF?

Ok, here’s ACTRA’s logic on this- follow it if you can:

If cellphone services operating in Canada can be owned by foreign companies, then cable TV companies might also ask for access to foreign capital. And if these scary foreign interests end up controlling our cable companies, then they may escape the CRTC’s jurisdiction.  Without CRTC control, these stations may avoid having to funnel their profits back into the production of Canadian content, and the forced production of Canadian television may cease.
And that’s why every time you call your mom on a WIND phone plan, Joey Jeremiah cries.

Of course, the existing Can-Con regime is on borrowed time anyhow.  Internet video falls outside of the CRTC’s reach, and with more Canadians watching on their laptops, the days of mandatory, subsidized Canadian TV shows may be numbered.

If that happens, then the only reason anyone would produce a television show in Canada would be if they thought people would watch it.  And we can’t have that, can we?

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