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Comment by zachallaun | Hacker News Reader

Thank God.

Seriously, this restores some of my faith in bureaucrats.

[edit] Interesting information from replies. I'll not be so quick to restore faith in the future.

The bureaucrats (CRTC) were the ones who tried to force this on the population. Elected officials decided to reverse the decision. The Conservatives first said they would send the decision back for "reconsideration" and then Harper chimed in with a more definitive reversal stance. The Liberals came out earlier saying they were against UBB. The New Democrats have always been fairly progressive about the web and are also against UBB. Even the separatist Bloc Quebecois and Green Party were both voicing concern with the decision. There was no major political party in favour of the decision.

We get into these kinds of messes because the CRTC is a bunch of unelected bureaucrats playing musical chairs in and out of executive positions at Rogers, Bell, Telus, etc.. It is most perplexing because if you've dealt with other bureaucrats in Canada, most of them at least care about their jobs and try to look out for the public good. We can joke at their expense about how they have all these perks and what not. But most do uphold the laws and regulations they're sworn to. And since they tend to outlast elected governments, these are the people that actually keep programs that we depend on, like health care, running. But the CRTC? It's the lone hold out of the bunch. I pretty much have nothing good to say about that organization. I would not be sad in the least if they were dissolved.

I think it's safe to say that, with two major reversals in a year, the CRTC has lost any credibility it may have had (although it did not have much to lose).

My vote would be for dissolution - maybe then they can create a regulator that actually employs people who understand what they're regulating.

They know what they're doing. The problem is that they're biased.

It's fundamentally the same issue that plagues financial regulation. The people who are the most qualified to understand the technological and regulatory issues are the most biased, because almost by necessity they're products of the same industry they're supposed to regulate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

On reading more about this I was depressed to see very little in the way of proposals to avoid the phenomenon, except (surprise! it's Stigler) don't regulate.

But I did find some interesting ideas at the end of this paper: http://www.icgg.org/downloads/Boehm%20-%20Regulatory%20Captu... (pp. 23-24)

What was the other major reversal? I'm a bit out of the loop.

The decision to block Wind Mobile from operating as it didn't meet Canadian ownership requirements.

See "regulatory capture" wiki link below. What'll happen is what always does in the US. They'll assume the only people who know what they're doing are the regulatED, and there's your revolving door.

Pretty sweet choices: idiocy or corruption.

I don't think they need to be disolved, as in theory they perform a necessary function. Instead, merely sack all of the directors and hold parliamentary hearings for their replacements. Make it open and accountable, and you won't see the kind of patronage happening.

I wouldn't get too far ahead of myself. I'm a former employee of the CRTC. We had one guy who was ~60 years old making decisions on what the definition of Broadband was, having no prior experience using said service. He was happy with his dialup back home...

As far as he was concerned, the Bell/Telus/Rogers Mobile internet devices were MORE than adequately priced and provisioned for in the broadband category.

Edit: My point is, anticipate more decisions like this.

The Liberals may be forcing an election soon, and after tens of thousands of complaint emails, the decision was an easy way to gain a couple percentage points in the polls. This was a no-brainer for the incumbent Conservatives, but their swiftness in resolving the issue was really impressive.

They weren't particularly swift. Every other party had come out strongly against UBB while the conservatives would only say they would be "paying close attention" to the ruling. This was simply such a wildly unpopular decision that it would have been political suicide to support it, and once every other party had come out against it the Conservatives couldn't be the only ones not to do so. The Conservatives are well-known for being anti-regulation and pro-big business, which aren't very popular sentiments in most of Canada. They couldn't afford to wear this albatross around their neck.

They weren't particularly swift. Every other party had come out strongly against UBB while the conservatives would only say they would be "paying close attention" to the ruling.

Opposition parties are always quick in reacting because there is little to be lost. They get zero credit for that.

This was simply such a wildly unpopular decision that it would have been political suicide to support it

Again, let's be rational here- the UBB decision impacted a very small number of users (although its competitive impact may have been larger over the longer term). Further there is a political risk in taking action like this in that now the opposition has the ammo to say "Well can't you let the experts do their job? Isn't this what they're supposed to do?" (see also: Census).

It isn't as clear cut as you proclaim at all. Now Bell can intentionally cripple their pipes for a bit, blame bandwidth hogs, and the Consveratives will be in hot water.

They could not come out against it before the ruling was made. They are the gov't, and the CRTC is an arms length agency. It's not the government's place to interfere with an arms length agency, at least before they've announced a decision.

It's actually in the CTRC's mandate that while they are arms-length, parliament has the right to overrule any of its decisions.

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