The CRTC’s bureaucratic war to keep community media out of community hands
The front page of ICTV Montreal’s website for its Tele1 project.
Written by: Aidan Jonah
The Canadian airwaves are often perceived as a banal thing, driven by rather bland citizens accepting of a socially progressive, economically neo-liberal society. Yet, rather than being a product of people residing in Canada, it is instead the product of the Canadian state’s legislative and bureaucratic suppression of ethnic communities, Indigenous communities and dissenting voices. That suppression, beginning after the CRTC was founded via the Broadcasting Act in 1968, ensures that ethnic and community media are structurally prevented from substantively criticizing Canadian foreign policy.
Community media was initially given some support by the CRTC, an arm of the Canadian state. In 1975, according to an unreleased journal report by Gretchen King, a Community Media Advocacy Centre (CMAC) Research Consultant and Assistant Professor of Multimedia Journalism and Communication at Lebanese American University, the CRTC mandated “cable companies to provide a community channel and financial support (based on a percent of revenues)”. In 1990, King explained that the CRTC put supporting a community channel as a mandatory element required “in return for the privilege of profiting from the use of public airwaves and cable infrastructure created through public policy”. Yet from 1997 onwards, the CRTC limited required expenses for large telecommunications companies and pushed support for independent media efforts (both community and ethnic) which relied on government funding, into the hands of telecoms who could keep more money in-house, effectively having “deregulated community television”.
By the 2010s, new methods of suppression were being conducted via the CRTC. They protected large television companies from community media organizations who repeatedly caught them in violation of licensing conditions and punished these organizations by blocking off critical opportunities for growth, even when forced to punish television companies. The experiences of Independent Community Television Montreal and its national project Tele1, in exposing misdeeds of large telecommunications companies and the CRTC’s efforts to protect these companies, is just the latest example.
This is only the top layer of the suppression cake the Canadian state maintains to control the airwaves.
Indigenous media, ethnic media and the profit motive
The Canadian Radio-Television Commission (CRTC) has been a critical tool for the Canadian state in pursuing this suppression since its founding in 1968. This “independent”, “arms-length” institution under the purview of Canada’s heritage ministry, has the powers equivalent to a Federal Court. It has the ability to force large telecommunications companies to provide money to broadcasters who have a CRTC-provided 91h (mandatory carry) license, to determine which radio stations can go on the airwaves, and much more. The CRTC website notes that the “CRTC is empowered to monitor licenses under the Broadcasting Act and Telecommunications Act; to deliver on the goals of these acts.”
This writer explained CRTC’s international equivalents for The Canada Files, in December 2022, which include “the US’ Federal Communications Commission and the UK’s Ofcom.”
The CRTC and Canadian broadcasting law ignored Indigenous peoples until the state felt this ignorance posed a threat which destabilized the Canadian state’s assimilation agenda, according to King. There was no mention of Indigenous peoples in the 1968 Broadcasting Act which included founding the CRTC, and this was the case until 1991.
Driven by the creation of the pass system trapping Indigenous peoples on their reserves unless they had the approval of an Indian Agent (lasting between 1885 to 1951), “Indigenous Peoples resisted the isolation imposed by the Canadian state by installing trail radios (Rupert, 1983) and effectively using broadcasting to link together communities segregated by colonial policies”, according to a Fall 2022 journal article for the Canadian Journal of Communication (CJOC) co-authored by Gretchen King and Felix Odartey-Wellington. Indigenous nations continued to broadcast after the pass system formally ended, and continued as unlicensed broadcasters even after the CRTC was created in 1968.
King explained that the Canadian only began paying attention to Indigenous broadcasting because “during the Oka crisis of 1990, unlicensed Indigenous radio stations were popular on reserves across Canada”, without facing the burden of regulation by a state which actively represses them. The Canadian government saw how these stations upset Canada’s assimilation agenda and rushed to regulate them.
Conveniently, King argues, the CRTC chose not to have its usual public oral process where organizations and individuals can testify in person (which is common before creating new policies), instead allowing only written submissions, for its process to develop a “Native Broadcasting Policy”. This led to policy and fundraising mechanisms which primarily matched the Canadian state’s interest to restrict strong Indigenous community resurgence against the state.
The Oka crisis began on July 11, 1990. The CRTC soon rushed out Public Notice CRTC 1990-89, a series of policies which regulated Indigenous radio stations for the first time. The policies came out on September 20, 1990, while tensions in Oka were still very high, but only six days later the crisis was over. The CRTC policies, focused on “Native Broadcasting Policy” forced Indigenous radio stations and television networks to be licensed by the Canadian state, and ensured that there was an added level of bureaucracy that stations faced to ensure they can operate. That bureaucracy included the requirement, eventually added in, to file a “Promise of Performance” when “applying for a new licence or license renewal”. This forced the stations and networks to reveal details of their programming and talent development plans to the Canadian state. Though the CRTC no longer requires Indigenous stations or networks to file a “Promise of Performance” report, a Fall 2022 CJOC journal article by King and Odartey-Wellington, noted that there is strong resistance to the state regulating Indigenous broadcasting in the first place:
“For many unlicensed Indigenous broadcasters, broadcasting without a licence or an exemption is an act of resistance—they see no need to seek approval from the Canadian state for using radio spectrum, a naturally occurring environmental resource that they consider part of unceded territory (Manuel, 2010; Szwarc, 2018).”
One example was Secwepemc Radio, which operated without a CRTC license between July 2005 to June 2007 as they “did not give up our right to make use of the electromagnetic spectrum to carry on our traditions, language and culture.” Another is Radio Barriere Lake (RBL). In a CRTC report, Julia Szwarc notes that RBL chose to go without a CRTC license due to “the long and expensive process needed to obtain a broadcasting license”.
Indigenous stations and networks do have one small thing in their favour, says Laith Marouf, CEO of Independent Community Television – Montreal and Senior Consultant with CMAC. The CRTC allowed them to operate as non-profits, opening the door for organizations which choose to reject the almighty profit motive.
Marouf notes that ethnic media organizations weren’t so lucky, with the CRTC’s regulations for ethnic media forcing them to be for-profit:
“Ethnic media is for ethnic communities, but this kind of media is forced to be for-profit [by CRTC regulations]. It ensures that even if a rich individual wanted to enable an ethnic media station to challenge Canadian foreign policy, they may have money initially, the station couldn’t rely on government funding as compliant ethnic media can. The station wouldn’t be able to obtain funding or mechanisms that exist in Canada. Therefore, the only option for such would be advertising, and who would advertise with media oppositional to Canadian foreign policy? Big companies wouldn't advertise out of political principles, while local companies wouldn't advertise out of fear of bureaucratic retaliation.”
It is little wonder then, that ethnic media, ethnic access to media and ethnic reflection in the media is hyper-corporatized. As Marouf notes, ethnic broadcasters “spread the government’s preferred messages to ethnic communities”.
Marouf said that many ethnic media stations are owned by large corporations or non-racialised owners. The most prominent case being that of OMNI, an ethnic TV station owned by Rogers Telecom, which has a mandatory carry license granted to it by the CRTC. OMNI came under fire for “using Mandarin and Cantonese newscasts produced by Fairchild TV, an outside contractor” despite OMNI’s basic distribution licensing agreement stating that “Rogers Media is supposed to produce and broadcast original content for the local communities where it operates.” These are far from the only issues with OMNI.
In 2014, Rogers had requested license amendments “such as the minimum number of ethnic groups and languages the stations must serve and the limit on programming from any one foreign language.” The CRTC rejected this request since it would’ve “resulted in a service that would not have met the minimum levels of the Ethnic Broadcasting Policy.”
In 2016, the CRTC found that OMNI was in violation of its license conditions for the mandatory carry license it held. As Marouf explains “OMNI was funneling money out, repurposing programming from its quote-on-quote community television station (Rogers TV) to OMNI, double billing it three or four ways for the same program”. By 2017, the CRTC had only partially approved Rogers’ OMNI application, but noted that they had failed to fully meet the criteria for a national, multilingual multi-ethnic discretionary service, supported by a mandatory carry license. The CRTC found that even with mandatory distribution, OMNI would struggle financially, while replacing weekly ethnic newscasts by local OMNI stations (cut in 2015) with local current affairs programs (starting in 2015, but only becoming daily in 2017) was the only new programming proposed by Rogers, when OMNI’s following of the Ethnic Broadcasting Act was lackluster. As a result, the CRTC published Broadcasting Notice of Consultation 2017-154, a call for applications for “a national, multilingual multi-ethnic television service offering third-language news and information programming” which would have a mandatory carry license.
With this call for applications, Tele1 was born. Tele1 was a project of Independent Community Television – Montreal, which was founded in 2013. ICTV sought to democratize community media and bring it back into the hands and control of volunteers. ICTV has had run-ins with Quebec-based large telecoms who showed flagrant disrespect for community television regulations, which led to more awareness and an eventual class action lawsuit.
Community Television and the fight against subversion of license conditions
In 2010, the Canadian government began requiring large telecommunications companies to “contribute five percent of their cable and satellite revenues to fund Canadian film and video content through the Canada Media Fund”. However, Marouf noted that an exception was made to allow these companies to spend two out of this five per cent on local community TV stations (counting as a Canadian production], which don’t have to be licensed by the CRTC and don’t even have to be separate corporations to the large telecommunications companies, with these stations typically just being represented by one line on an annual budget sheet.
Marouf says these companies will repurpose other local tv station content onto the community stations, and push the extra two per cent into their core news operations, to protect their bottom line. The suspicion of license violations by Vidéotron sparked the first clash that Independent Community Television Montreal (ICTV), founded in 2013, would have with the CRTC. Quebec’s largest cable provider, Vidéotron, applied for a license to operate a second community television channel, after MAtv, this time focused on Montreal’s English-speaking population. The channel would’ve been called MYtv. The money to fund this second channel would’ve come out of money which would otherwise go to the Canadian Media Fund, taking millions more ($6 to $10 million more) away from this fund which supports independent producers.
MAtv was required by the license conditions to have Community Access programming be at least 45 per cent (50 per cent if community demand is higher) of the programming broadcast on the channel. Community Access programming is only considered as such, if produced by one of: volunteers who have creative control over it, independent community services or by local not-for-profit community television corporations (TVCs). As the CRTC explained in a 2015 decision on Videotron’s aforementioned English channel bid, “creative control [for volunteers] consists of two elements:
1) The idea for an access program must originate from a community member not employed by a BDU; and
2) [T]he community member must be involved in the production team
a) in an on-camera role (e.g., a personality or actor that appears in a predominant portion of the production) or
b) as a creative member of the production crew (e.g. director, producer, writer).”
Instead, King said most of the content Videotron labeled as Community Access programming was actually made by their producers or was purchased independent programming.
ICTV would soon file an application to the CRTC, seeking to obtain the two per cent “local expression contribution” Videotron directed to MAtv annually, to run a non-profit community media organization which would be volunteer operated. This was on the basis of Broadcasting Regulatory Policy CRTC 2010-622, which stated that if a cable company failed to run a community radio or television station in compliance with their license, then a non-profit could take their license. Also, if a cable company didn’t provide a channel, the non-profit could obtain that company’s two per cent “local expression contribution” to fund their community television station.
Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2015-31, focused on two things: the allegation that Videotron’s MAtv service was violating its license conditions and Videotron’s application for an English version of MAtv (MYtv). Interventions from multiple Montreal-based organizations revealed that Videotron consistently refused Community Access projects, paired with “very little indication from Videotron as to why their projects were rejected.” An example of this was when the Association multiethnique pour l’intégration des personnes handicapées “had sought to pursue its work on the program “Nous sommes encore là, a pilot”, which “was rejected without further explanation.” The CRTC found that “access to the community channel consists more of interaction with citizens than of actual access to the airwaves”, and rejected the idea that interaction with citizens meets the standard of community access. Access and volunteer training also seemed to be directed “only to certain students, not the general population.” J-Source noted one important passage showcasing the statistical side of failing to meeting Community Access broadcasting standards:
“(O)nly 30.2 per cent of MAtv’s programming … was devoted to access programming.” The number “is far removed both from the 45% threshold required by the Regulations at the time, and the 59 per cent level of access programming Videotron claims to have broadcast.”
In the end, the CRTC ruled that MAtv, Videotron’s community access station, wasn’t in compliance with its license conditions, and hadn’t been respecting its commitments to Community Access programming. Yet, instead of stripping Videotron of its license to operate MAtv, and beginning the process to hand over the license to MAtv, to operate via Videotron’s two per cent “local expression contribution”, the CRTC gave Videotron until August 2015 to come into compliance with its license requirements. The CRTC then extended the license for another year, until September 2016.
King noted that access to community media is guaranteed under Section 3 of the 1991 Broadcasting Act and by the Quebec and Canadian charters concerning rights and freedoms that guarantee communication as a fundamental freedom. This legislation opened the door for ICTV Montreal to file a class action lawsuit in 2015, on behalf of consumers, with long-time community television volunteer André Desrochers being the case’s designated plaintiff. The class action saw the plaintiffs suing “Videotron for $3.6M, prorated to the hours of incorrect programming, in addition to $2M for moral and punitive damages and damages for the breach of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
In 2016, Broadcasting Regulatory Policy CRTC 2016-224, determined that that independent non-profits replacing the non-compliant community television stations of large telecoms and receiving the same “local expression contribution” which the telecom-owned community station had received would introduce “a destabilizing element into the broadcasting systems”. Using this claim and their desire to “not put into the question the stewardship of BDUs (Broadcasting Distribution Units = the regulatory name for satellite, cable, Internet television providers) over community channels” as justification, the CRTC prevented non-profits from replacing non-compliant community television license holders.
Limited changes had occurred by 2017, when MAtv was up for license renewal yet again. In the 2018, decision around MAtv and eight other Videotron owned community television stations (Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2018-269), the CRTC sided with VideoTron. The CRTC allowed:
Programs which featured business professionals outside of media to be considered access programming,
Videotron’s MAtv to have more than 20 out of 50 per cent of mandated Community Access programming, to be produced local not-for-profit community television corporations (therefore allowing MAtv to continue restricting community organization access in favour of their preferred programming)
A categorization that benefitted MAtv, by allowing “shows for which access had been granted to a media professional” to be considered part of the Community Access programming section, only for the weeks which were subject to a monitoring exercise. This being used to help MAtv meet its requirement that 50 per cent of programming be Community Access.
The last point being especially egregious as in 2015, the CRTC had criticized MAtv’s choice to have most show hosts be “former conventional Quebec television hosts or future hosts who have already appeared in popular programs” and to have creative control be mostly in the hands of media professionals rather than volunteers, as being inconsistent with the Canadian Broadcasting Act’s “clear objectives”.
It was also revealed that the citizen advisory committee that Videotron had for MAtv, a regulatory obligation set out in a 2015 CRTC decision, had no real power or access to information. Rather than punishing Videotron and its MAtv community television station for violation of license conditions, the CRTC chose to change regulations and issue new decisions that favoured them over independent non-profit organizations.
After defeat in the CRTC’s 2018 license renewal process, ICTV Montreal’s class action lawsuit against Videotron continues. In February 2019, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled against a Videotron motion which sought to appeal the Court of Appeal of Quebec’s 2018 decision in favour of ICTV. Jooneed Khan, Tele1’s Vice President of Finances, says the ICTV class action is still in progress.
By this point, the CRTC had been engaging in more shenanigans against community organizations opposed to corporate disdain for broadcasting license regulations.
OMNI – the untouchable one
The CRTC’s Broadcasting Notice of Consultation 2017-154, was a call for applications for “a national, multilingual multi-ethnic television service offering third-language news and information programming” which would have a mandatory carry license. It was made on May 15, 2017, after the CRTC only approved Rogers’ OMNI license renewal application on an interim basis, from September 2017 to September 2020, while Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2017-152 and Broadcasting Order CRTC 2017-153 made it clear that Rogers’ OMNI did not meet its expectations for an ethnic media service. In the words of the CRTC, OMNI was only licensed so it could “fill the gap in multilingual, multi-ethnic programming from a Canadian perspective while the Commission conducts a proceeding to consider proposals for a service that will meet the needs of third-language Canadians.”
To meet this call, ICTV Montreal formed a national project called Tele1 in 2017. ICTV Montreal’s board structure was enlarged to represent the entirety of Canada in the months before the Tele1 project was launched.
ICTV had to work relentlessly to meet the application deadline of August 2017. They worked to prepare details of Tele1 and Tele2’s potential programming, determine how they’d meet all of the CRTC’s requirements and reach as many ethnic groups and Indigenous nations as possible, and plan how they could build ties with educational institutions.
The CRTC summary of ICTV’s application stated that ICTV’s Tele1 and Tele2 channels would, “serve up to approximately 45 ethnic and Indigenous groups in 45 languages” and “broadcast daily 30-minute newscasts and weekly current affairs programming in 10 different languages”. ICTV’s full description of their application included further details. It stated that “the programming will also offer live sports coverage in Ethnic and Indigenous languages” and “feature cross-cultural exchange programming in multiple languages that promotes understanding between Indigenous Nations and new immigrant communities.”
Approximately 56 per cent of Tele1’s programming was set to be either news, local current affairs, or community media broadcasting, with the remaining 44 per cent consisting of:
Third language and Indigenous music
Reruns and International content
Third language and Indigenous dramas
Third language and Indigenous children content
Indigenous language current affairs
Afro-Caribbean current affairs
ICTV was seeking a monthly per subscriber wholesale rate (comes with a mandatory carry license) of $0.40, for Tele1. At the time, this would’ve seen Tele1 “receive $40 million in annual guaranteed funding”, while being “carried on all cable/satellite television distribution platforms” across Canada. ICTV sought no mandatory wholesale rate for Tele2.
The costs of setting up Tele1 and Tele2 would have been covered by $20 million of seed money from Fonds de Solidarité (FTQ) of Desjardins Bank and unions in Quebec. Marouf says ICTV had received a letter of intent from both parties confirming this.
After meeting the CRTC deadline, the next wave of coalition building was working to collect interventions and have people send letters of support for ICTV’s Tele1 and Tele2 applications, which had to be submitted by May 17, 2018, though this deadline was extended to June 18 of the same year.
King’s role on the enlarged ICTV steering committee and eventually advisory board, was to collaborate with educational institutions so that there would be a pipeline from the university to working at Tele1 or Tele2. King built collaborations with the universities across the country, which included “getting the Canadian Communication Association to support the ICTV application because of our educational initiatives.”
ICTV’s Tele1 application got the support of journalism and communications departments of Université du Québec à Montréal, University of Ottawa, York University and Toronto Metropolitan University (then called Ryerson University).
The Tele1 application wasn’t the only application which outstripped Rogers’ OMNI offerings; Voices, a project operated by Ethnic Channels Group Limited (ECGL), did as well. ECGL had been in operation for 13 years at the time of its application, having a track record of providing ethnic language programming, offering a different package than ICTV.
On May 23, 2019, the CRTC released Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2019-172, in which they returned the mandatory carry license to Rogers’ OMNI project. This decision only referenced reasons why the CRTC chose Rogers’ OMNI project, but failed to compare any of OMNI’s offerings to those of the other eight applications. The other applications were rejected without explanation. Some points where ICTV-Montreal’s Tele1 and Tele2 programming promises were superior to Rogers’ OMNI included:
ICTV promised to serve up to approximately 45 ethnic and Indigenous groups in 45 languages, whereas Rogers promised to broadcast ethnic programs in at least 20 different languages on their BC, Prairies and Eastern Canada feeds, and 15 different languages on their Quebec feed. Even if all Rogers’ OMNI feeds were combined, ICTV’s Tele1 and Tele2 offered 10 more languages served than it.
ICTV promised to produce and broadcast 10 original, first-run, national, 30 minutes news programs every day of the week, in ten different languages. Rogers’ OMNI promised to produce and broadcast at least “6 daily, original, first-run, national, 30 minute news programs, 7 days per broadcast week, in at least six different third languages.” Rogers’ OMNI promise served four fewer languages than ICTV’s Tele1 and Tele2 promise.
ECGL’s Voices project also had stronger programming promises than Rogers’ OMNI did:
Voices promised to “offer programming in 25 different languages simultaneously using the multiple language feeds”. Rogers’ OMNI would offer programming in different languages for each show.
Voices promised that Canadian programming levels would be “75% of the broadcast day and 85% of the evening broadcast period (6:00 p.m. to midnight).” Rogers’ OMNI promised that Canadian programming levels would be 55 per cent of the broadcast day, and 50 per cent of evening broadcast period.
These points indicate how serious of a problem it is that the CRTC didn’t explain why they rejected ICTV, ECGL and other applications for the mandatory carry license, nor compare Rogers’ OMNI promises to other applicants.
Slava Levin, CEO of ECGL, even says that “Rogers claimed that they technically could not support what we were requesting to do,” and had submitted a confidential note to the CRTC saying this, which ECGL has never been able to read to this day.
“The CRTC just had to run its course through this. Rogers was a shoo in from day one. They just did not want to muddy the water,” said Levin.
Evan Kosiner, who led the Multicultural Described Video Guide (MDVG)’s application for the 91H grant, has similar sentiments to Levin and ICTV. Kosiner, whose MDVG application for a described video guide until the 91H license was rejected without any reasoning provide, sees the CRTC’s decision as a farcical one.
ICTV’s website notes that “On June 24, 2019, ICTV filed a Motion for Leave to Appeal Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2019-172 and Broadcasting Order CRTC 2019-173 at the Federal Court of Appeal on grounds of Reasonable Apprehension of Bias.”
In the motion, ICTV alleged that of the three members of the three Commissioner CRTC panel which presided over the four-day hearing held between November 26-29, 2018, to determine which application would be granted the mandatory carry license, two of them (Ian Scott – CRTC Chairman and Caroline J. Simard – CRTC Vice-Chairperson of Broadcasting), “had communicated independently with representatives of Rogers and Bell on multiple occasions and without notice to ICTV.” These communications allegedly occurred after Broadcasting Notice of Consultation CRTC 2017-154 was released in May 2017, and before Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2019-172 was released in May 2019.
ICTV alleged that:
“Scott communicated with representatives of Rogers on three occasions and representatives of Bell on two occasions. Simard communicated with representatives of Bell on three occasions. In total, eight communications were held by Scott and Simard during the active public proceeding.”
ICTV also alleged that:
“Neither the fact that the Communications took place, nor the subject matter discussed in the Communications were disclosed by the CRTC, Rogers, or Bell to ICTV. No similar communications took place between members of the Panel and representatives of ICTV.”
In an included affidavit, Laith Marouf stated that:
“There is no record of similar communications between any member of the Panel and any representative for the other parties that submitted applications in response to the Notice of Consultation.”
These alleged communications led ICTV to feel that it was “not provided with the same opportunity to present its case to the Panel as were Rogers and Bell and was not able to respond to any submissions made in the Communications”, and therefore believe that the CRTC Commissioners Scott and Simard were biased in favour of Rogers and Bell’s applications.
Pages 57 to 71 of ICTV’s Motion for Leave to Appeal substantiates the allegations made by ICTV. These pages include copies of eight Monthly Communication Report(s), that match the allegations of Scott and Simard holding eight total communications with a representative of Rogers or Bell’s parent company (BCE Inc.).
The numbers of these reports are: 4903-416330, 4971-416535, 4971-419951, 4971-422620, 4903- 429297, 4903- 432347, 4971-435636 and 4971-450159.
The allegation of the aforementioned communications not being disclosed “by the CRTC, Rogers, or Bell to ICTV” are also proven by looking through all CRTC decisions and public releases. These communications were certainly not mentioned to the general public, shown by in CRTC decisions and public releases in relation to the application process for the mandatory carry license which OMNI lost full possession of in 2017.
ICTV’s website noted that they deposited a petition to the Governor in Council which requested that:
The “decisions be rescinded on grounds they violate Paragraph 3(1)(d)(i) of the Broadcasting Act and therefor(e) serve to harm, impoverish and weaken the cultural, political, social and economic fabric of Canada.”
The Governor in Council remove “the Chair and Vice-Chair of the CRTC from their positions as well as to fill the openings by members of Canada's diverse ethnic and linguistic minorities.”
This petition was rejected by the Governor in Council.
Kosiner says after the CRTC’s Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2019-172, the Heritage Minister reached out to him and other applicants. Kosiner had two meetings with Canadian Heritage, one in Toronto and the other in Gatineau, where he says the ministry said: “We hear you, we are going to try a new thing.” Kosiner says they never did such a thing.
In August 2019, the Federal Court of Appeal rejected ICTV’s Motion for Leave to Appeal. Fasken, the law firm which represented Rogers in responding to ICTV’s application, stated in an article: “The Federal Court of Appeal ordered that the motion for leave to appeal be dismissed, with costs, finding that the applicant did not demonstrate an arguable case that the decision of the CRTC made an error of law or jurisdiction based on a reasonable apprehension of bias.”
The Canada Files reached out to the CRTC, BCE and Rogers for comment. Only Rogers replied, but they linked a 2019 legal decision in their favour, rather than providing comment.
OMNI and Rogers by extension, got away with failing to meet license conditions and undeserving ethnic communities. Thanks to this decision, ethnic communities will continue to receive corporatized news focused on advertising and profit margins, instead of community-centered news coverage and content.
The rule of not the following license conditions and escaping consequences
In the modern day, the CRTC continues to suppress ethnic communities and individuals who could challenge Canadian colonialism and Canada’s imperialist foreign policy. The experiences of Independent Community Television Montreal (ICTV), and its national project Tele1 illustrate this in the modern day, though it has been a reality for decades since the CRTC’s founding in 1968.
The CRTC has proven to be an agent of the Canadian state, tasked with suppressing independent community voices and organizations which could threaten the power of Canada’s mainstream media, and challenge both Canadian colonialism and imperialism. To do this, they have both closed off avenues which would’ve allowed independent organizations to take over funding of community radio television stations funded by large telecoms, and allowed these telecoms to violate regulations and license conditions without long-term consequences. Up until this point, the CRTC has succeeded in carrying out its role.
ICTV isn’t going down without a fight, however. Laith Marouf says they are trying to figure out different paths to launch a television station, which would be an international English speaking TV station based in Canada. Marouf says ICTV hopes to have “some good news for everybody” in “six to nine months”.
Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country's only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We've provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
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Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news outlet founded in 2019. Jonah has broken numerous stories, including how the Canadian Armed Forces trained neo-Nazi "journalist" Roman Protasevich while he was with the Azov Battalion, and how a CIA front group (the NED) funded the group (URAP) which drove the "Uyghur genocide" vote in parliament to pass this February. Jonah recently wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.
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