Telus says Bell in no position to defend CRTC jurisdiction on standstill rule

The CRTC is within its jurisdiction to order companies to keep carrying each other’s TV signals even in the middle of a dispute, Telus Corp. told Federal Court, but the company also argued BCE Inc. isn’t the right entity to defend such an argument. That’s why, late last month, Telus requested the Federal Court of Appeal give it intervenor status in the case Quebecor Inc.’s Groupe TVA has brought against Bell, which challenges the regulator’s jurisdiction to force the companies to maintain that carriage status quo. In June, the Federal Court of Appeal said it would hear the challenge to a CRTC decision to impose on both parties the Broadcasting Act’s “standstill” rule, which stipulates that the status quo must be maintained, even if the parties are in the middle of a dispute and don’t want the channel in question to continue to be carried. In April, Quebecor pulled its TVA Sports channel from Bell’s package of services, which led to an emergency CRTC hearing, a mandatory order to reinstate the channel, and ultimately a finding of non-compliance against Quebecor. Telus is arguing in its court filing that it leans on the standstill rule to “protect it against demands made by programming undertakings during the re-negotiation of the terms on which will carry the programs produced by programming undertakings.” The company said it sometimes finds itself subject to dispute resolution proceedings to deal with an inability to come to agreements on program purchases. The current price that Bell pays for TVA Sports -- which Quebecor says is undervalued relative to Bell’s own sports channel, RDS -- was determined through the CRTC’s final arbitration process. In that, the regulator picks either of the two companies’ final offer price. In this case, it chose Bell’s offer. Telus also said it is concerned that without the standstill rule, content owners “could threaten to cut off services during the re-negotiation period unless the BDU agreed to exorbitant demands,” which it said is an anti-competitive practice. The urgency in Telus’ case is derived from the fact that it is not, unlike Bell, a vertically integrated company, meaning it doesn’t own both content and the method to deliver it -- it’s simply a purchaser of programming, it argues in the filing. It alleges Bell, the defendant in this case, would “benefit in some cases” from the elimination of the standstill rule because it can then hold its own content, and that previous positions Bell has taken before the court were “diametrically opposed” to what it is defending now in this case. It therefore said it cannot rely on Bell to articulate the importance of the standstill rule for those that are not vertically-integrated. “Their readiness to defend the CRTC’s jurisdiction vigorously in this case is therefore open to doubt -- as witnessed by their failure to oppose the granting of leave to appeal,” Telus said. The second part of Telus’ argument involves showing that the standstill rule does not conflict with the Copyright Act, which Quebecor has used to argue that it shouldn’t be forced to allow its copyrighted works to be used by others against its will.

Telus says Bell in no position to defend CRTC jurisdiction on standstill rule

Brief | October 9, 2019

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Telus says Bell in no position to defend CRTC jurisdiction on standstill rule

Brief | October 9, 2019

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