Court of Appeal directs CRTC to reconsider Radio-Canada N-word decision

In a Thursday ruling, the Federal Court of Appeal sided with Société Radio-Canada (SRC) and ordered the CRTC to reconsider a decision chastising the public broadcaster for using the N-word on air. The matter arose in 2020 when a radio broadcast referred to Pierre Vallières’s 1968 book by its controversial title. A complaint was lodged by a listener. The commission ordered the network to apologize in 2022, setting off a firestorm at the broadcaster. Employees said the decision amounted to censorship. Two CRTC commissioners dissented from the ruling. The broadcaster did apologize last year but said its independence was being compromised by the regulator. SRC appealed the decision, maintaining the commission had exceeded its jurisdiction. The court unanimously agreed with it, ordering the decision to be set aside. “Given that Parliament has mandated the CRTC to act as the initial decision-maker with respect to what can and cannot be said on the air, I would return the matter to the CRTC so that it may re-determine the merits of the complaint,” Chief Justice Marc Noël wrote. His ruling was concurred in by Justices Richard Boivin and Nathalie Goyette. In its original decision, the CRTC conceded that the N-word was not used in a discriminatory fashion but still did not meet the programming standards set out in the Broadcasting Act. The commission sought leave to intervene in the Federal Court of Appeal case, but that was denied on the grounds that it would violate the idea of impartiality and finality. Instead, Professor Paul Daly of the University of Ottawa was appointed as a friend of the court to file a brief outlining the CRTC’s defence. The Attorney General of Canada was acting alongside Radio-Canada. The ministry argued that the Supreme Court had repeatedly said the commission had no jurisdiction to impose standards, Daly said the Broadcasting Act is sufficiently broad to permit the regulator to look at content. The Attorney General also submitted that allowing the CRTC to enforce content restrictions could contravene the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Daly argued that since the dissenting commissioners considered the charter, it should be assumed that so did the majority of the remaining commissioners who approved the action that was taken. Noël conceded that the commission has some powers to regulate what may be said on the airwaves. But those powers are not as broad as what Daly had argued in the amicus curiae brief. “The Attorney General is therefore correct in arguing, with the support of the SRC, that the CRTC overstepped its jurisdiction by sanctioning the SRC on the sole basis that the content broadcast on the air was, in its opinion, inconsistent with the Canadian broadcasting policy,” the court declared. –Reporting by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca and editing by Tessie Sanci

Court of Appeal directs CRTC to reconsider Radio-Canada N-word decision

Broadcast | June 9, 2023

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Court of Appeal directs CRTC to reconsider Radio-Canada N-word decision

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