Do you believe in fairness? Do you believe in freedom? Do you believe in Canada? Do you believe in puppies?
Both Sun News Network and its (primarily left-wing) opponents are debating the network’s application for mandatory carriage on cable and satellite systems, which was published on Monday and will be the subject of a CRTC hearing on April 23. Each has prepared talking points to further their causes for and against. Unfortunately, a lot of them are based on incorrect information or oversimplifications of complex issues.
This is primarily the fault of the CRTC, which has a very complex regulatory system governing television distribution (and in particular specialty channels), one that is constantly changing.
To help clear up some of this, I’ll offer some perspective on the claims made so far in this debate so you can form a better opinion (or, more likely, use them against your opponents in your Twitter flame wars).
For the claims from Sun News, I’ll primarily refer to tweets from “Canadian TV First”, its marketing campaign to support this application.