OTTAWA - A former chairwoman of the CRTC says she's not holding her tongue any longer after watching the Conservative government demand a reversal of the regulator's decision on usage-based Internet billing.

Francoise Bertrand, now president of the Federation of Quebec Chambers of Commerce, has remained largely silent over the last decade on telecom issues so that she wouldn't be seen as an armchair quarterback.

She also sits on the board of media giant Quebecor, which owns cable Internet provider Videotron -- an owner of network infrastructure that has supported the concept of usage-based billing for its wholesale clients.

Bertrand remains a passionate advocate for the CRTC's independence, and told The Canadian Press she finds it "disturbing" that the federal cabinet has rejected the CRTC's decision.

She said she believes the government's actions are based on electoral concerns and pleasing voters.

"The CRTC's great advantage was it was giving the possibility for the government to have an institution at arm's length.

"It was not a political decision. It wasn't, 'I like your face, I don't like your face.' It's not based on an upcoming election. It was based on due process."

The Conservative government demanded the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission go back to the drawing board after the regulator ruled last month that large telephone and cable companies could place price caps on how much bandwidth smaller Internet service providers used on their networks.

The move would make it difficult for smaller ISPs to offer unlimited plans to their customers, some of whom are heavy uploaders and downloaders.

The issue created a wave of protest from Internet users across Canada, and by smaller ISPs.

CRTC Chairman Konrad Von Finckenstein announced the commission would take another look at the issue, but Industry Minister Tony Clement has bluntly said the government would not accept usage-based billing. Last year, Clement also overturned a decision by the CRTC that barred Globalive from entering the cellphone market.

"I find that quite disturbing. ... It's entirely the right of the government to say, 'I want a different role for the CRTC, I want to change the perspective.' Well then, the tools for them are the policies and the legislation -- upstream, not downstream."

Bertrand, who under the Liberal government did not have a single decision overturned by cabinet, said that repeatedly questioning the decisions of the commission will only sow confusion in the telecom and broadcasting industries and potentially hamper investment.

"Now we have a minister, or I don't know who, who have not heard all the facts, all the elements, and decides arbitrarily that it's not a good decision and it should be the other way around," said Bertrand.

"What it means for business is that there is no longer predictability in the system. Right now there are rules, principles, policies, legislation and regulation, and businesses develop their business plans and they ... know what the parameters are, and they know how to calculate their risk."

Bertrand was chairwoman of the CRTC between 1996 and 2001, and was viewed as bringing about greater public input into the regulatory system.

The man who steered the CRTC between Bertrand and Von Finckenstein, Charles Dalfen, died suddenly in 2009.

In her role at the Federation of Quebec Chambers of Commerce, Bertrand is an advocate for deregulation in the media industry and has argued for the user-pay principle in the education and health fields.

Bertrand supports the CRTC's position that users should pay for their volume of usage and notes that many of the high-volume users are also probably not respecting intellectual property rights with their uploading and downloading.

She is also critical of the view that charging smaller ISPs for heavy usage would somehow stifle innovation.

"But who doesn't understand how this heavy usage brings the necessity for the infrastructure (telephone and cable) companies to invest more in speed ... that it's the infrastructure companies that pay, not the reseller -- the reseller doesn't bring any innovation," said Bertrand.

George Burger, an adviser to Internet service provider TekSavvy, criticized Bertrand's comments as self-serving because of her role on the board of Quebecor.

He rejected the notion that smaller ISPs were piggybacking on the huge investments of the big telcos and cable companies. He said TekSavvy has paid millions to Bell for the use of its networks.

"Without this kind of infrastructure sharing, there would be no competition in long distance," Burger says. "There's nothing onerous or negative about it, it's simply the fallout of the desire of policy-makers to encourage competition."