OTTAWA – The CRTC has promoted Claude Doucet to Secretary General.
Doucet (pictured), formerly executive director of communications and external relations at the Commission, took on the role on an acting basis in September after Danielle May-Cuconato left for a position at Public Works Canada. Executive director broadcasting Scott Hutton and executive director telecom Chris Seidl also filled in while a permanent replacement was being sought.
In a note to staff on Thursday, CRTC chair and CEO Ian Scott said that the recruitment process attracted a number of highly qualified internal and external candidates.
“As a seasoned senior executive in the federal government,…
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Company fined $15K; owner/president ordered to pay $10K
OTTAWA – The CRTC is cracking down on an alleged telemarketer for violating the Telecommunications Act by ignoring its repeated requests for information.
In Compliance and Enforcement Decision CRTC 2017-445 issued Wednesday, the Commission found that Topline Air Duct Cleaning and its owner and president, Naveed Raza, failed to respond to a request for information (RFI) letter dated July 31, 2015 despite two deadline extensions and a show cause proceeding in August.
“The Commission reiterates that individuals and companies cannot blatantly ignore RFIs made in the course of an investigation without consequence”, reads Wednesday’s decision. “As part…
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GATINEAU – Toronto-based lawyer Monique Lafontaine has been named the CRTC’s new Commissioner for Ontario.
Wednesday’s announcement by Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly says that Lafontaine (pictured) brings over 17 years' experience in entertainment and communications law to the role, and that her areas of specialization include television, radio, new media regulation, program licencing and affiliation agreements, stakeholder relations, and anti-spam and privacy legislation.
Lafontaine, who is fluently bilingual, will begin her five-year post on January 2nd, 2018. According to her LinkedIn profile, she held senior roles at ZoomerMedia, the Directors Guild of Canada and law firm McCarthy Tétrault before opening her own communications and entertainment…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has turned down a request from Rogers Media seeking to decrease local programming on the Quebec feed of its multilingual multi-ethnic discretionary service OMNI Regional.
OMNI Regional offers its service in four separate regional feeds. Rogers asked the Commission to change the condition of licence from requiring the Quebec feed of the service to include 14 hours of original, local independently produced programming each week to be 14 hours of original, local ethnic programming each month.
Rogers said that the proposal to provide 14 hours weekly of original, local independently produced programming on the Quebec feed was…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC is stepping up its fight against unwanted telemarketing calls by proposing universal call blocking for “blatantly illegitimate” phone numbers.
The Commission defined blatantly illegitimate numbers as those where the calling number is the same as the called telephone number; numbers spoofed to be local calls when they’re actually long-distance numbers; and numbers that do not conform to the to the North American Numbering Plan (NANP), i.e., are non-dialable telephone numbers like 000-000-0000.
The regulator issued a call for comments Thursday on a proposal that would require all Canadian telecommunications service providers to implement the technology within nine months…
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Bell says it’s also hiring 40 digital media specialists
TORONTO – Bell Media this week let go a number of people at several local radio and TV stations this week.
While the company declined to confirm the numbers, Bell Media union Unifor says at least 50 positions have been terminated spread across 17 stations. The cuts include on-air positions as well as technicians and other operations employees.
According to the Unifor press release, this last round of cuts eliminates what people have historically defined as local anchors and journalists dedicated solely to sports. Bell began this process earlier this year. Popular…
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OTTAWA—Public policy should not dictate matters of jurisdiction, lawyers for Bell Canada argued on Tuesday before the Federal Court of Appeal in the company’s nearly two-year-long quest to have the court overturn the CRTC’s mandatory Wholesale Code.
Bell Canada argues that nothing in the Copyright Act or Broadcasting Act gives the Commission the right to impose certain prices and other commercial terms for TV programmers to license their programming to BDUs, which is Bell’s main beef with the Wholesale Code.
“There is no doubt that the CRTC has wide discretion” to regulate programming negotiations, “but its power to do so is…
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OTTAWA – This new guy is definitely different from the last one.
Exactly five years ago, then-new chair Jean-Pierre Blais used Ottawa’s IIC Canada conference to set out his plan for the Commission under his leadership. None could understand at the time how his “consumers, creators and citizens” vision would break apart industry assumptions, challenge business as usual, increase consumer involvement with the Regulator – and foster unprecedented levels of acrimony between the chair and industry – and between the chair and some of the CRTC staff and commissioners. A lot of that pain was fueled…
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OTTAWA – Canada’s anti-spam legislation may be burdensome for businesses, but it is beginning to pay off, says Steven Harroun, the CRTC’s chief compliance and enforcement officer.
In a recent address to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology as part of CASL’s planned three year review, Harroun described the legislation as “largely effective” and stressed that it would be counterproductive to tweak it at this point.
He quoted a third-party study that determined there was 29% less spam email in Canadians' inboxes and 37% less spam originating from Canada just one year after CASL's implementation. Internationally, he continued, Canada is…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Canadians continue to gorge on data, using 25% more per month on their wireless devices than they did in 2015, says part two of the CRTC’s 2017 Communications Monitoring Report.
Mobile broadband subscriptions jumped 13.3% (3 million) year-over-year, and users averaged 1.2 GB of data per month on their wireless devices. More than a quarter of those who subscribed to a monthly data plan had at least 5 GB of data.
Young people are turning to their wireless device to watch TV, with 41% of 18-34 year olds using their smartphones to watch TV online, compared to 11% of…
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