By Steve Faguy
MONTREAL — The CRTC decided today it has had enough of the long history non-compliance from two Quebec radio stations and refused to renew their licenses, ordering them to cease broadcasting by Aug. 31.
The decisions released Friday affect CJMS 1040 AM, a country music station licensed to the Montreal suburb of Saint-Constant, and CFOR-FM 99.3, a rock station in Maniwaki, a small town north of Gatineau. In both cases, the Commission cited the stations’ repeated failure to comply with their conditions of licence and said it had little confidence that they would comply with them in the future. It also noted that they produced little in the way of local programming.
CJMS launched in 1999 and since then has failed to fully comply with its licence conditions the entire time. Instead it saw short-term renewals in 2006, 2008, 2010, 2014 and 2018, the last two with mandatory orders to comply imposed. In 2014, the Commission threatened to pull the licence over the repeated non-compliance, but owner Alexandre Azoulay agreed to sell the station to CPAM Radio Union, owner of Montreal’s Haitian station CJWI 1410 AM, for the nominal sum of $15,000.
CJWI was also threatened with having its licence pulled as part of the same proceeding, and is waiting on a decision.
CJMS’s compliance issues run the gamut, including insufficient French-language music and failure to pay Canadian talent development contributions, but the biggest issues have been administrative, related to filing annual returns, keeping proper logs and audio recordings, and answering questions from the CRTC.
When it appeared at a teleconference hearing in June, CJMS representatives said the latest failure to file annual returns was because the person responsible for ensuring compliance failed to check attached financial statements to ensure all pages were included. It said a designated person would ensure all documents were complete in the future. This did not impress the Commission, which noted that CJMS “proposed the same solution during the last licence renewal and was unable to meet its commitment.”
The decision notes that CJMS “had many discussions with Commission staff to help it comply with the various sections of the regulations” and “received several warnings from the Commission to ensure compliance,” in vain.
Besides the direct licence compliance issues, the Regulator noted the lack of local programming. CJMS said it did not have enough staff to hire journalists, and depended on local newspapers for news. Rather than produce its own newscasts, it relied on “national” news produced by CJWI, which interveners criticized as not being relevant to Saint-Constant. The CRTC concluded “CJMS does not adequately serve Saint-Constant, the market it is licenced to serve, which is contrary to Broadcasting Regulatory Policy 2006-158 and the Commission’s expectation that a radio station’s offer local programming.”
Programming was brought up as an issue by Michel Mathieu, a broadcasting consultant who was CJMS’s original owner. Mathieu told the commission it should “pull the plug” on the station to send the message that the CRTC takes licence compliance seriously.
The decision makes clear the CRTC does not believe CJMS is taking its responsibilities seriously and “is not convinced that a change in the licensee’s behaviour regarding its regulatory obligations will occur: none of the licensee’s actions demonstrates a willingness to comply with its regulatory obligations in the future.”
The decision not to renew the licence means it will expire on Aug. 31, “and, as of this date, the licensee will have to cease operating this station.”
It invited anyone interested in starting a new radio station serving Saint-Constant to apply for a new licence.
The same fate applies to CFOR-FM, whose licence was not renewed because of the “history of non-compliance and the licensee’s actions, which demonstrate its poor understanding of its conditions of licence and regulatory obligations, or its lack of willingness to respect them; of its inability to implement the necessary measures to ensure compliance; and of its disregard for the Commission’s authority and for its responsibilities as a broadcaster,”
“The Commission is of the opinion that Mr. Lépine’s behaviour in relation to the commitments made at the public hearing demonstrate his contempt for the Commission’s regulations and the absence of any due diligence to comply with them.”
Like CJMS, CFOR has a long history of licence compliance issues. Many of those were related to financial contributions, which led to short-term renewals in 2012 and 2015. In 2018, the list got longer, leading to a mandatory order and a second demand that it make on-air announcements about its failure to comply with its licence conditions.
This year, the CRTC found issue with nine regulations, two conditions of licence and a mandatory order it failed to comply with.
While CJMS, at least, had its controlling shareholder speak to the Commission directly last month, CFOR’s controlling shareholder Josée Cholette literally didn’t even phone it in, and had minority shareholder and administrator Roch Lépine represent her instead. This, the Commission found, shows “a complete disregard for her regulatory obligations and a lack of due diligence to comply with them.”
Even after the hearing, Lépine disappointed the Commission by failing to file documents he had undertaken to file by June 26. He instead asked for an extension – three days after the deadline.
“The Commission is even more convinced that neither Mr. Lépine nor the licensee understands, to this day, the nature of their regulatory obligations,” it wrote in the decision. “They seem to continue to believe that the deadlines imposed by the Commission are flexible. The Commission is of the opinion that Mr. Lépine’s behaviour in relation to the commitments made at the public hearing demonstrate his contempt for the Commission’s regulations and the absence of any due diligence to comply with them.”
Concluding the owner was not “a responsible licensee,” the CRTC decided its licence will also expire Aug. 31.
Two other stations, CJWI Montreal and CKMN-FM Rimouski/Mont-Joli, were also part of the June proceeding and are awaiting decisions on their fate.
