I think the real issue is that cable tv and satellite tv have a lot of money and clout. The OTA broadcasters are often owned or controlled by the same cable and satellite companies.... ie CITY owned by rogers and CTV by BCE. They have very little interest in broadcasting OTA for free... they want everyone to subscribe to their services. In addition, CRTC has very little clout and no power to force the OTA broadcasters to up their signal. It makes at lot of sense for them to broadcast miniscule power so everyone is forced to abandon their antennae and move to a subscription service. For example, CTV, a profitable station owned by BCE is using a miniscule 7 KW. They were 300 KW before on analog.

Its all economics and the bottom line.
I predict OTA will disappear in ten years or so as more stations lose money and go out of business.