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But it isn’t facing up to a changing world that tangles up the telecom and cable giants: they’ve been doing that for decades. It’s that the CRTC, despite its consumer-friendly rhetoric, retains an impassable thicket of rules and regulations — such as those that compel cable operators to carry specific, selected channels on even the most basic packages. Even if no one watches them. Greedy shareholders don’t run SaskTel: It’s a Crown corporation. But even it surely knows that it won’t keep its most frugal customers from cutting their cords by offering a basic cable package half-populated by unintelligible programming. The only reason it must is because regulators in Ottawa have deemed the French channels mandatory carriage, meaning the cable provider has no choice but to include them in even the skinniest package.

A smart cable provider might seek to offset the problem by fattening up that bundle with channels that customers actually want to watch. But the CRTC has been fiercely stingy about that, too. When Vidéotron General Partnership in February asked for regulatory permission to add extra channels to its skinny package, still keeping its price at $25, it was refused. That, the CRTC said, would exceed the “maximum” amount of channels Vidéotron was allowed to offer, and would unacceptably blur the distinction between basic and premium packages, controverting the regulator’s goals of offering Canadians an entirely no-frills service.

So, to keep Canada’s media sector current in a universe where Netflix, podcasts and YouTube offer limitless content, this is what the CRTC thinks is consumer friendly: A mandatory cheaper package, loaded with unwatched must-carry stations, with a prohibition on subscribers getting more and better channels for free. Now, was someone saying something about cable companies being the ones out of touch?