Federal Court of Appeal sides with Bell, strikes down CRTC's TV Wholesale Code

OTTAWA – Former CRTC chair Jean-Pierre Blais’ ears must have been on fire Monday.While the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement did away with the CRTC’s 2015 decision to ban the simultaneous substitution of Canadian ads into the broadcast of the Super Bowl here (one of the landmark rulings to come out of Blais’ so-called “Let’s Talk TV” process), the Federal Court of Appeal on Monday sided with Bell saying the Regulator has no right to dive deeply into affiliate contracts between broadcasters and carriers, what the Commission called its Wholesale Code.The Wholesale Code, said the Regulator when it was released by...