Telecom Act trumps provincial laws, says Quebec Court

By Denis Carmel

MONTREAL – In a ruling handed down earlier this month, The Court of Quebec ruled the federal Telecommunications Act not only has precedence over the provincial Consumer Protection Act but also that the sections of the provincial law that deal with contractual issues in telecommunications are null and void.Investigators with Quebec’s Consumer Protection Agency (in French, the Office de la protection du consommateur, or OPC) originally found that contracts from telecommunications providers contravened sections of the CPA (in French, the Loi sur la protection du consommateur, or LPC), enacted in 2009.Infractions were deemed to have occurred between November 2012 and...