TV Wholesale Code: "It's not for the CRTC to come along and put its thumbs on the scale," says Bell at Federal Court

By Laurel Hyatt

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 not...