OTTAWA – Despite its popularity with consumers, Canada’s national do not call list could be in jeopardy by next spring unless the CRTC can find funding to continue investigating telemarketing complaints and enforcing compliance.
The Commission listed this somewhat startling matter as a ‘risk and uncertainty’ in its quarterly financial report for the period ended September 30, 2011 released Monday.
Despite being granted power five years ago under the Telecommunications Act to create and administer the national DNCL, the Commission said that it did not receive incremental on-going funding “to perform these non-discretionary, statutory responsibilities”. To date, the CRTC said its investigation and enforcement activities have been funded by interim measures on a year-to-year basis, but that no funding has been approved beyond March 31, 2012.
“The lack of long-term funding for the DNCL continues to be a challenge for workforce stability and staff retention”, reads the report. “The CRTC, Industry Canada, and central agencies continue to work together to explore funding solutions and establish an on-going source of funding. Failure to obtain additional funding beyond 2011?-12 will put the continued operation of this activity at risk.”
The CRTC is financed in part by the government through parliamentary appropriations (e.g. statutory vote for employee benefits plans (EBP), budgetary vote for investigation and enforcement activities associated with the national do not call list, and anti-spam law activities).
The balance comes from vote-netted fees it collects from the regulated industries. Vote-netting is a means of funding selected programs or activities wherein Parliament authorizes a department to apply revenues collected from fee payers towards costs directly incurred for specific activities.
The CRTC has the authority to use a portion of the Part I licence fees collected from broadcasters and a portion of the annual telecommunications fees collected from telecommunications carriers to finance the costs it incurs in regulating the broadcasting and telecommunications industries (i.e. respendable revenue). The balance of these two fees recovers the costs for items funded through appropriations (e.g. EBP) and costs incurred by other government departments on the CRTC’s behalf and are classified as non-respendable revenue.
The CRTC explained a “significant variance” in expenditures between fiscal year 2010-11 and 2011-12 as due primarily to activities related to the new anti-spam law. Under this law, the CRTC has new investigative and enforcement responsibilities and powers to counter spam, malware, botnets, and network re-routing. The law may come into force during 2011-?12.
– Lesley Hunter
