Ontario commissioner not named to most panels
OTTAWA – The conflict between CRTC Ontario commissioner Raj Shoan and chairman Jean-Pierre Blais has escalated again.
Earlier this month, Shoan filed another judicial review with the Federal Court of appeal once again challenging the CRTC chairman’s ability to name panels of commissioners to preside over telecom hearings. While Blais and the CRTC’s legal department maintain the chairman has the right to name panels of commissioners for hearings (which has been the accepted practice according to former commissioners and others we have talked to), Shoan insists that under the Telecommunications Act, the chair is not allowed to unilaterally name them on his own even though he is allowed to under the Broadcasting Act.
Shoan’s latest filing asks the court to quash Blais’ decision to name commissioners Peter Menzies, Yves Dupras, Christopher MacDonald and Linda Vennard, as well as the chairman, to preside over the Regulator’s recently announced hearing into the neutrality of differential pricing packages on broadband data packages. Shoan maintains that the Commission’s telecommunications committee must name panels, not the chair himself.
“In my view, the Telecommunications Act provides no ability for the chairperson to name panel for telecommunications hearings and all commissioners are legally entitled to vote on any matter under that legislation,” Shoan wrote.
The filing also asks the court to prohibit Blais from naming panels in the future, too. This application is very similar to one Shoan filed back in October 2015 over the same issue.
Shoan’s most recent affidavit also includes a list of 18 CRTC hearing panels (both public and non-appearing) from 2014 and 2015 where he has been named to just one of them, a non-appearing one, back in April 2015.
When he saw the list of commissioners named to the upcoming hearing, Shoan wrote in his affidavit: “As expected, I was not named to the panel to hear this public hearing. I therefore have launched this judicial review to contest the chairman’s authority to name the panel in question under the Telecommunications Act.”
In the backdrop of both of these court filings, however, is a contentious relationship between the two men, detailed by Shoan’s June 2015 request for a judicial review of Blais’ leadership of the CRTC. That application stemmed from a wide range of complaints which the Ontario commissioner made plain in correspondence with the chairman and his staff (We reported on that here.) Those persistent complaints and how they were finally dealt with by Blais and his staff ultimately led to a charge of workplace harassment being leveled at Shoan and was upheld by an investigator – and resulted in Shoan having to abide by certain restrictions upon how he works.
It is not known when the court will hear this latest application, but a court date of June 21st has been set to hear the June 2015 judicial review application. (An earlier version of this story said the court may choose not to hear the application, but unlike appeals court, where the court may choose not to hear the application, judicial review requests are always heard, unless a motion is brought to dismiss it.)
