Last April, the CRTC conducted a hearing to review a 2 per cent cable levy (bringing in roughly $120 million a year) that four family-controlled cable monopolies, Cogeco, Rogers, Shaw and Vidéotron, have been mostly using as their own media slush fund. These corporations already earn a 25 per cent profit margin amounting to almost $2 billion each year, and both Rogers and Shaw have raised cable rates by more than 68 per cent in recent years. If you haven't heard about this large community media fund, it's because it appears to have been mismanaged and put towards what many consider to be commercial television endeavours.

My guess is it's pretty easy to arrange lunch with the Prime Minister. No doubt Stephen Harper often lunches with labour leaders and advocates for the homeless.

So it should be considered no big deal that, among those the PM has lunched with, is U.S. media billionaire Rupert Murdoch, who has probably done more than any single individual in recent years to push American politics sharply to the right.

It's interesting to imagine, however, why our Prime Minister would want to meet with Murdoch, whose Fox News TV channel has poisoned U.S. political debate and nurtured America's extremist right-wing Tea Party movement.

I recently found my way into a media and technology industry conference where I "accidentally" bumped into the chair of the CRTC, Konrad von Finckenstein, who was surprisingly charming. Our conversation couldn't have been more different from the experiences I've had at CRTC hearings, where commissioners bear down on you with condescending glares, like feudal lords against the backdrop of a row of flags, the CRTC logo hanging overhead in place of a medieval coat of arms.

A year ago, OpenMedia.ca and Canadians for Al Jazeera, along with several other groups, rallied people from across Canada to contact the CRTC in support of Al Jazeera English's (AJE) application to broadcast in Canada. Of the approximately 2,800 public comments submitted to the CRTC, all were in favour of bringing the broadcaster to Canada, except 40 parties who filed comments in opposition.

It's not a question of if we can have a digital media revolution; it's a question of what kind of revolution we want to have. The signs of a media system in transition are everywhere, visible both through our use of media and in media policy.