CRTC rejects PIAC/FRPC call for strengthened broadband participation fund

The CRTC has decided it will not open proceedings into creating a strengthened Broadcast Participation Fund, after being asked to do so by a pair of public interest advocacy groups. In declining to launch a proceeding into bolstering the fund on the heels of a request to do so by the Public Interest Advocacy Group (PIAC) and the Forum for Research and Policy in Communications (FRPC), the CRTC said that its authority to mandate new contributions to the fund from broadcast distribution undertakings is unclear. "The CRTC notes that the outcome of these proceedings would be uncertain, in part due to a lack of clear authority to create regulations to this effect under the current Act, and, even if successful, the BPF would not be provided with any meaningful measure of stable funding in the short to medium term," the regulator wrote in an August 6 letter to PIAC executive director and general counsel John Lawford and FRPC executive director Monica Auer. In the April Part 1 application, PIAC and the FRPC asserted that the $6.6 million Broadcasting Participation Fund was approved by the CRTC a decade ago to facilitate consumer and public interest groups’ participation in its broadcast proceedings and that it may run out of money by the end of 2022. While the Government's update to the Broadcasting Act, known as Bill C-10, would create new authorities for the CRTC to extract public interest funding from broadcasters, the CRTC rejected PIAC and the FRPC's argument that some level of new money would be needed to bridge the gap. “So there’s a gap of two years where nobody will be able to do proceedings, including precisely those ones about how C-10 will be implemented, which is one of my real concerns. If it is a skeletal act, then the CRTC proceedings will matter an awful lot for the details,” Lawford told The Wire Report back in April. Rather than a proceeding aimed at creating new fund contributions, the CRTC said it will organize an online meeting in the coming months "in order to engage with Canadian public interest and consumer organizations." "This meeting will serve to enhance understanding of the challenges and barriers facing these organizations when they intervene in Commission proceedings and begin the process of identifying the most appropriate and effective model(s) of funding to provide support for such organizations in the future," the CRTC wrote. The CRTC also wrote in its Aug. 6 letter that it wouldn't be able to amend the Tangible Benefits Policy -- as requested by PIAC and the FRPC -- while it reviews Rogers Communications Inc.'s proposed acquisition of Shaw Communications Inc. The CRTC wrote that it "does not consider" reviewing both things at once "would be in keeping with the principles of regulatory certainty and predictability upon which the agreement between Shaw Communications Inc. and Rogers Communications Inc. was negotiated and concluded." — Reporting by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca and editing by Hannah Daley at hdaley@thewirereport.ca

CRTC rejects PIAC/FRPC call for strengthened broadband participation fund

Broadcast | August 12, 2021

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CRTC rejects PIAC/FRPC call for strengthened broadband participation fund

Broadcast | August 12, 2021

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