Source : Globe & Mail

by Hugh Winsor

Appointments to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission give interesting twists on the old adage: "It is not what you know but whom you know that counts in politics."

In the case of Martha Wilson, whose prospective appointment to the powerful broadcasting and telecommunications regulator is swirling around the Ottawa ether, the nomination is in play because of both what she knows and whom she knows.

Most recently, Ms. Wilson has been in charge of the Cable Public Affairs Channel (CPAC on your screen), the successor to the old parliamentary service, which was taken over and vastly supplemented by the television cable industry.

She stepped down a few weeks ago as part of the distancing process in anticipation of the CRTC appointment.

But it is her previous position, as the manager of the Rogers Cable bureau on Parliament Hill, that is causing ripples in the Liberal Party caucus, and indeed throughout the broadcasting and telecom communities. In that job, she helped members of Parliament prepare programs for broadcast on cable systems in their ridings.

At one level, this could be considered a non-controversial public service earning political good will for Rogers. It is not the specifics but the general association with the Rogers communications empire that is causing the static.

Rogers, especially since it mishandled the introduction of new specialty channels a couple of years ago, has become a target for the Liberals.

As Ian Morrison, spokesman for the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting lobby group, put it: "From the minute she walks in the door at the CRTC, she is going to be seen as the commissioner for Rogers Communications, regardless of how fair or unfair that may be."

Although senior Rogers officials, especially chairman Ted Rogers and vice-chairman Phil Lind, have long Tory associations, Ms. Wilson has been involved with the Liberals and is a good friend of Danielle May-Cuconato, the chief of staff to Minister of Canadian Heritage Sheila Copps. It just so happens that CRTC appointments are made on the recommendation of Ms. Copps.

Aside from the immediate political connections, Ms. Wilson's appointment raises the broader issue of knowledge and experience versus conflicts. She is very knowledgeable about broadcasting (Ms. May-Cuconato had also tagged her for another job in the cultural bureaucracy at one point) and has transformed the old parliamentary channel from reruns of Question Period into a pro-active and innovative public-affairs broadcaster with the motto "unfiltered and uncut."

Without the compression or "spin" of the other networks, CPAC has been providing service across a much broader spectrum than parliamentary politics.

Ms. Wilson is going to the CRTC at a time when the regulator has a life-and-death power over the future of broadcasting, cable and telecommunications companies in the new competitive and evolving world of convergence. It is also a time when the Rogers empire has its back against the wall and needs all the friends it can get.

THE appointment of Joan Pennefather falls more directly into the whom-you-know category. Ms. Pennefather was an Ottawa lobbyist or representative for the National Film Board of Canada who was moved up to the top job at the NFB for a period, but it would be a stretch to call her a filmmaker.

She was really a cultural administrator who presided over the board in more tranquil days and then was appointed director-general of the National Arts Centre, a job which turned out to be short-lived. Since then she has been working in the public-relations firm run by Ms. Copps's former campaign manager, a firm which has been on the receiving end of many contracts from the Heritage Minister's department.

But the real push for her appointment came from her good friend Jean Pelletier, the chief of staff to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.

The CRTC may be the linch-pin for several of what are considered the most promising industries of the future, but filling its powerful positions is just another Liberal family affair.

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