OTTAWA – The CRTC estimates that its total telecommunications regulatory costs for the 2018-2019 fiscal year, defined as April 1, 2018 to March 31, 2019, are $29.095 million.
The Telecommunications Fees Regulations, 2010 (Fees Regulations) provide for the payment of annual telecommunications fees by certain telecommunications service providers, as set out in sections 2 and 3 of the Fees Regulations.
The annual adjustment amount referred to in subsection 3(5) of the Fees Regulations is $1.552 million for the 2017-2018 fiscal year.
The Commission said Wednesday that the net billing for its telecommunications fees for the 2018-2019 fiscal year, taking into account the adjustment above,…
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TORONTO – Canadian entrepreneur and broadcaster Evan Kosiner wants the Feds and the CRTC to use the National Alert Aggregation & Dissemination System (NAAD System) to urge Canadians to vote in their upcoming provincial and municipal elections.
In a statement Wednesday, Kosiner said that he wrote a letter to Prime Minister Trudeau, Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly and the Commission asking them to “use their power” to promote civic engagement.
"If due to government bureaucracy it doesn't fall into the "emergency" category, the innovator in me suggests it perhaps it could be conveniently another test day that happens to mention to "Get out…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC is tweaking its regulatory framework for next-generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1) services at the behest of the New Brunswick 9-1-1 Bureau, which filed a review and vary request on behalf of a number of public safety answering point organizations.
The Commission said that it has determined that there is “substantial doubt” as to the correctness of its previous decision to exclude secondary public safety answering point (PSAP) connections from next-generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1) network access tariffs, as set out last June in Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2017-182.
Therefore, the Commission varied that determination on Monday to include NG9-1-1 related…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – On Thursday morning, the CRTC will release its new report into the future distribution models for content in Canada, which it was asked to do by the Governor-in-Council in September 2017.
The report, called “Harnessing Change: The Future of Programming Distribution in Canada,” is meant to aid an overhaul of the Broadcasting and Telecom Acts by answering the three main questions which were posed by the Order-in-Council from Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly:
the distribution model or models of programming that are likely to exist in the future
how and through whom Canadians…
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TORONTO – The Commissioner of Competition has put the kibosh on Corus Entertainment’s plan to sell French-language specialty channels Historia and Séries+ to Bell Media.
Corus announced the decision in a statement early Monday, adding that both it and Bell Media are reviewing the decision “and considering the appropriate course of action." Corus also pledged to provide further updates “in due course”.
The $200 million proposed sale, first announced last October, requires both Competition Bureau and CRTC approval, plus “other customary closing conditions," added Corus. The application is currently before the CRTC.
As readers will recall, Historia and Séries+ (plus the…
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GATINEAU – Christianne M. Laizner is the new full-time telecommunications vice-chairperson at the CRTC, a role that she has held on interim basis since last July.
Canadian Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly announced Laizner’s appointment early Thursday. Her five year term will officially begin on July 17, 2018, making her the first female vice-chairperson of telecommunications in the CRTC’s 50-year history.
Laizner (pictured) first joined the CRTC in 2010 as general counsel, telecommunications before being named the Commission’s senior general counsel in 2013, and then executive director of the CRTC legal sector. She was called to the Ontario Bar in 1982…
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YES, A MUST-CARRY TV license is not the lottery win it once was and yes, making a linear ethnic programming service in various languages work as a business within the Canadian TV system has always been a challenge which has only grown more difficult of late.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t people who think they can make a national ethnic TV channel work. In fact, including the incumbent, there are eight companies with some pretty bright ideas.
OMNI has long been the mainstream ethnic channel, serving up a mix of Italian, Cantonese, Mandarin, Punjabi and other programming over the…
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TORONTO and MONTREAL – A group of broadcasters along with the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA) have filed a complaint against the Bell Fund pertaining to the guidelines of its new TV Program and the composition of its Board of Directors.
A not-for-profit organization founded in 1997, the Bell Fund invests in Canadian digital media and TV content and is certified by the CRTC as an independent production fund eligible to receive and administer contributions from broadcast distribution undertakings (BDUs). It receives annual contributions of approximately $17 million from Bell TV as part of its BDU contributions.
Blue Ant Media, CBC/Radio-Canada, the…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has attached a number of mandatory orders to the license renewals of two French-language radio stations.
French-language ethnic commercial AM radio station CJWI Montréal received a two-year renewal, from September 1, 2018 to August 31, 2020, with the Commission noting that the short-term licence renewal will allow for an earlier review of the station’s compliance with regulatory requirements.
The three mandatory orders attached to the station’s new licence pertain to sections 8(1), 8(4), 8(6), 9(2), 9(3)(b) and 9(4) of the Radio Regulations, 1986, which encompass program logs, the annual submission of a statement of accounts, and…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC is demanding that the country’s wireless providers and the National Alert Aggregation and Dissemination (NAAD) system administrator Pelmorex explain “the issues” around last week’s rocky test of the emergency alert system.
“As reported in the media, the visible tests issued during the 2018 EPW (Emergency Preparedness Week) did not achieve full success, and in some instances, the test alerts were not distributed at all on LTE networks of the Wireless Service Providers”, reads the two letters, both dated May 17.
Both the letter to the wireless providers and Pelmorex's letter, which was addressed to regulatory and strategic SVP…
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