Does it take a court order to improve performance at the CRTC?
That is what a recent filing by Cogeco is charging following delays in getting a ruling on a complaint that says a Quebecor internet radio station (QUB) is broadcasting over the FM airways in contravention of CRTC ownership and control rules.
A summary of the case is found in a CRTC letter to the parties from this past January. Filing jointly with Bell, Cogeco sent its complaint to the CRTC in November 2024, seeking a determination to prohibit Quebecor Media and Leclerc Communication from broadcasting QUB Radio content on Leclerc’s radio station CJPX-FM Montréal.
In December 2024, the Commission published the application and sent a letter to Leclerc and Quebecor. With all of the clearing of confidentiality claims, submissions and responses, the file didn’t wrap up until March 7, 2025. In early August, Cogeco asked for the Commission to render its decision without further delay (“nous demandons au Conseil de rendre une décision, sans plus tarder”). Two weeks later, five months after the file closed, the CRTC informed Cogeco that it can expect a decision “in the coming weeks”. The space-time continuum seems to work a little differently in the public service, so here we are, two months later, and “the coming weeks” have not yet come.
You may recall that I had a post last summer entitled “Regulatory accountability” that included a link to a [pdf] 171-page report from the Forum for Research and Policy in Communications (FRPC). Included among the recommendations in “The CRTC’s performance, 1969 – 2025: Analysis and recommendations” were calls to “improve the timeliness of its decision-making by publishing decisions concerning broadcasting, telecom and online news applications within 4 months of receiving the applications.”
The CRTC’s own plans call for 75% of “decisions on telecom and broadcasting applications [to be] issued within four months of the close of record”. I found it interesting that the CRTC’s plan shows that it achieved that target 87.5% of the time in the 2023-24 budget year, but the Commission set a target for itself of only 75% in 2024-25.
Is this “sandbagging” the objective or setting their sights too low? When the CRTC achieved the 4-month objective 7 out of 8 times one year, why lower the target so significantly? Indeed, looking at what percentage of files don’t meet the standard, the Commission is saying that its target is to double the number of files that miss, rising from 12.5% to 25%.
Perhaps the Cogeco court filing reflects a reality, but shouldn’t we be able to expect a better service standard from the CRTC? It shouldn’t require a court order to improve performance at the regulator.