Supreme Court says it will hear Bell’s simsub appeal

The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) will be the final arbiter in the years-long Super Bowl simsub saga, as the highest court in the land will give BCE Inc. the opportunity to argue its case against the CRTC’s ban on simultaneous substitution for the Super Bowl. The SCC said Thursday it would hear both Bell's and the National Football League’s (NFL) appeal on the same issue, as well as another case, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration v. Alexander Vavilov. Its focus will be on “the nature and scope of judicial review of administrative action.” “To that end, the appellants and respondent are invited to devote a substantial part of their written and oral submissions on the appeal to the question of standard of review,” the SCC said. The Vavilov case will consider whether the Federal Court of Appeal "defined and applied the appropriate standard of review" to a decision by the Registrar of citizenship that revoked the Canadian citizenship of a man born in Canada to parents who were undercover Russian spies. In the simsub case, the court will also wrestle with the question of whether the CRTC has the "jurisdiction to make and order dictating the content of a single program for distribution by cable and satellite providers under s. 9(1)(h) of the Broadcasting Act," it said on its website. The SCC declined to expedite the hearing of the appeal, which Bell had asked to be scheduled for the fall of this year. The court previously denied, weeks ahead of the 2018 Super Bowl, a Bell request for a stay on the ban, meaning U.S. channels broadcasting the game could continue to air American commercials. Simultaneous substitution allows Canadian broadcasters to replace U.S. commercials on American channels with their own. Following its initial decision, then-CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais said it chose not to eliminate the practice entirely because it generates revenue for Canadian broadcasters and the creative industry, but to make an exception for the Super Bowl because “Canadians have told us loud and clear: the advertising is part of the spectacle associated with that event.” The CRTC first said that it would ban simultaneous substitution for the game in January 2015, beginning with the 2017 game. Bell said that it lost 39 per cent of its viewers as a result. The company has been fighting the CRTC on the issue since, first launching an initial appeal in March 2015 that was dismissed in September 2016 for being premature. Bell then re-filed, and in December 2017, the Federal Court of Appeal denied the second appeal. Since it was first issued, the ban turned into a political issue at times, with both U.S. and Canadian politicians and Unifor chiming in. The NFL brought the case up in the U.S. consultations on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiations.

Supreme Court says it will hear Bell’s simsub appeal

Brief | May 10, 2018

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Supreme Court says it will hear Bell’s simsub appeal

Brief | May 10, 2018

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