The internet is “just a fancier tin can with a string”, than electrical cables used for radio and TV signals, so internet tariff rates should be set and regulated by the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), just as cable tariffs are.

And those regulated tariffs should apply to community radio and all other broadcasters according to Ken Zakreski, president and developer of Gabriola Radio Society (GRS).

Zakreski also thinks that Heritage Canada should at least fund the start-up costs of community radio from broadcast licence fees collected by the CRTC, and that cable networks should be required to carry the signal of community radio, public broadcasters, and new online media. He said Shaw cable will not be required to broadcast the CBC and community radio after 2011. GRS is an organisation that is working to establish a community radio station on the island.

In a Jan. 26 interview Zakreski said that he and fellow GRS Directors Kathy Ramsey and John Hague took all three of those messages to CRTC policy review hearings on Jan. 18.

Zakreski said that about once a decade the CRTC reviews its policy regarding community radio. He said that because the commission is hearing from stations that are just starting up and coping with issues of ‘spectrum scarcity’ (i.e., that no radio bandwidths have been reserved for community stations, and the radio spectrum is running out of useable frequencies), GRS had been called to provide testimony via video-conferencing to the hearings in Gatineau Quebec.

In Jan. 2008, Gabriola Radio applied for the 98.7 position on the FM radio band. Rogers Broadcasting Limited countered with a claim for the use of channel 98.5, which, if granted, would interfere with the signal from the 98.7 position. As this conflict means that only one application can go forward, the CRTC will have to rule on which station gets a band.

Rogers did offer, in their submission to the CRTC, that if they are successful in their application for 98.5 they would complete an engineering brief for GRS, “thereby almost ensuring Gabriola Radio will get on the airwaves”, said Zakreski.

“The commission’s mandate comes from the Broadcasting Act which requires them to assign the FM bands ‘to the highest public use’ ”, Zakreski said, “We are arguing a community station is a higher public use than a light rock commercial repeater (another band simply expanding a signal that is already being broadcast)”. He said Gabriola Radio filed an ‘intervention’ opposing Rogers’ application, and is now waiting for a public hearing.

Zakreski said that the CRTC policy review hearings are a “big deal” with many presentations from participants across Canada, but these ones are particularly important now that the regulation of “new media” - media available over the Internet - is being considered.

Zakreski said the Federal Court of Appeals will decide whether regulation of the internet and new online media fits within the jurisdiction of the CRTC. It will also decide whether the commission can continue to collect licensing fees from broadcasters, he said.

Zakreski said: “It is important that the public has access to community radio, including use of mobile devices such as stations that broadcast on the internet”. He added that the Supreme Court of Canada has awarded the CRTC permission to continue to collect broadcast licensing fees.

The commission could recommend to Heritage Canada that those fees go towards funding community radio stations in Canada, Zakreski said. He said the community radio policy review will determine how the government treats community broadcasters, noting that they have never received funding even though they have been in operation for over 25 years. He hoped that Heritage Canada will agree to match community funding collected for community radio.

Zakreski said GRS’s presentation was well received, and was particularly glad that the commission asked what criteria it should use to determine how to award channels to different applicants. He said GRS suggested evaluation criteria should include the following: “local content ongoing and during emergency events, isolation of the community to other local media outlets, and that unique attributes of the broadcasting community (cultural, language, ethnicity and geography) new and original programming should take preference”.