PIAC takes paper bills fight to cabinet

The Public Interest Advocacy Centre has asked the federal government to reverse a March CRTC decision allowing Telus Corp.'s Koodo Mobile flanker brand to stop issuing paper bills to those who request them. In a petition to the governor-in-council sent on Monday, PIAC asked the government to either rescind the decision, or send it back to the regulator for further consideration. The decision, PIAC argues in a joint petition with the National Pensioners Federation, allows Koodo to unilaterally switch customers over to electronic billing, taking away control over billing from seniors who are less adept with computers than the rest of the population. PIAC had asked the CRTC to mandate paper bills for those that want them back in 2018. Telecom companies told the regulator they had no obligation to provide the bills in comments during the process. "Many customers, often seniors, because of various challenges with electronic communications, cannot access their bills," PIAC's new petition reads. "The CRTC’s Koodo Decision unilaterally and unfairly removed Canadians’ power to interpret, contest, manage and generally control paying their wireless bill, by wrongly interpreting the law, by considering only the views of wireless carriers, not customers, and by removing consumers’ choice of billing formats to meet their needs." The petition also argues that the CRTC effectively prioritized the 2006 Maxime Bernier-era policy directive to the CRTC to “rely on market forces to the maximum extent feasible as the means of achieving the telecommunications policy objectives,” which PIAC argues "effectively wrote any consumer needs or humanity considerations out of the Telecommunications Act." The new policy directive of February 2019 -- which asks the CRTC to prioritize competition, affordability, consumer interests and innovation” -- was an attempt to "reverse the negative effects" of the 2006 decision, PIAC argues. The petition says the new directive should have been followed, given the "nearly unanimous public comments arguing against unilateral removal of paper billing by Koodo." Just over a week after the CRTC declined to require Koodo to issue paper bills to those customers that want them, Rogers Communications Inc. said it would stop issuing paper bills. The company said it began informing customers of the move February 10.

PIAC takes paper bills fight to cabinet

Brief | June 2, 2020

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PIAC takes paper bills fight to cabinet

Brief | June 2, 2020

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