The parties are currently engaged in a carriage dispute
By Ahmad Hathout
Corus is suing Telus in the Ontario Superior Court for allegedly breaking its distribution agreement by withholding and refusing to repay roughly $2.5 million in service fees.
Corus filed the claim this week revealing the parties are currently engaged in a dispute over the terms for carrying Corus’s services, which Telus continues to distribute per a regulatory standstill.
Crucially, the existing agreement, which continues to govern the parties during the dispute, includes a section that stipulates that Telus “shall not deduct or set-off any amounts for any reason from Service Fees without [Corus]’s prior written consent,” the court filing says.
Corus says it became aware on June 28, 2024 that Telus had allegedly deducted roughly $2.5 million from its May 2024 remittance payment to Corus. Corus claims Telus told it that that was an overpayment adjustment. Still, Corus says this is a deduction to which it allegedly never consented.
“Despite repeated demands from Corus, and in the face of the clear language of the Agreement, Telus has refused to repay the improperly deducted amounts to Corus,” Corus says in the filing. “Telus’s improper set-off or deduction constitutes a clear breach of the Agreement. In the alternative, Telus has been unjustly enriched, and Corus has been correspondingly deprived, without any juristic reason.”
The existing distribution agreement includes a section that allows Corus to audit Telus’s books, records and accounts, according to the filing. If Corus is found to have underpaid Telus, it would owe the delta; if it overpaid, Telus would pay the difference.
Corus, in fact, claims that an audit of the remittance period between May 2021 and April 2023 found that Telus underpaid Corus, which says Telus accepted and paid back the media company.
Still, Corus claims this undermines Telus’s claim that it overpaid for the services.
Corus is asking the court for a restitution in the amount of roughly $2.7 million, which would include interest for the alleged breach.
We’ve reached out to Telus for comment and will update if/when it responds.
Corus is currently embroiled in another carriage dispute with Rogers, which has been forced by the CRTC to continue distributing some of Corus’s services under the standstill rule – the use of which the cable giant will challenge at the Federal Court of Appeal.
