By Ahmad Hathout
The Governor in Council has rejected an application to force the CRTC to relook at a decision it made that automatically renewed the broadcasting licences of major broadcasters that have been clamouring for changes to their regulatory obligations due to worsening financial conditions.
The Governor in Council said in the decision dated December 8 that it “is not satisfied that the decision derogates from the attainment of the objectives of the broadcasting policy for Canada set out in subsection 3(1) of that Act,” and that it, on the recommendation of the Minister of Canadian Heritage, “declines to refer back to the Commission for reconsideration and hearing” the CRTC’s decision of August 8, 2023.
It is currently unclear to Cartt who filed the original petition.
The decision by the CRTC to renew the expiring licences until August 2026 has been a sore spot for broadcasters for months now because they claim that the renewals ignore the realities of a worsening market where foreign streamers continue to take market share from them and as the advertising market shows little sign of improving.
But it was an especially sour experience for them because the decision came after Part 1 applications requesting that their regulatory obligations be lessened and to allow them to move some money around to other productions had already been filed and went unaddressed.
The regulator has effectively parked those concerns until it gets through the process of implementing the new Online Streaming Act, which is intended to bring online and foreign streamers under the ambit of the Broadcasting Act – in other words, to force them to pay into the system and spread out the support for Canadian content.
But large broadcasters, such as Rogers and Bell, made it a point during the first phase of the Online Streaming Act hearings – which set out to determine whether online platforms must make a base financial contribution to the system and concluded earlier this month – that the current regulatory environment is untenable for broadcasters.
The CRTC has already proposed that Corus have its regulatory obligations to Canadian content reduced on a temporary basis, but that preliminary view is the exception and not the rule in part because it is not a vertically integrated company like Rogers and Bell.
Despite the Governor in Council decision, Bell still has an outstanding appeal of the CRTC’s decision in the Federal Court of Appeal, which it believes to be a novel challenge because it involves challenging the regulator’s ability to renew such licences allegedly without notice or consultation.
