Public interest groups call for shored up Broadcasting Participation Fund

A group of six consumer and public advocacy organizations is asking the CRTC to step in to restructure a Rogers Communications Inc. payment to shore up a fund meant to bankroll public interest participation in broadcasting proceedings before the regulator. Last week the Broadcasting Participation Fund wrote in a press release that if the "gap between available funds and qualified applications is not addressed," the fund would have to cease its operations this year. The fund wrote that while the cost of funding applications and its own operations costs some $700,000 per year, the fund had less than $330,000 remaining to reimburse qualified applicants. "Unless funding sufficient to meet its mandate is made available by August 2023, the Board of Directors of the BPF will suspend operations and may permanently close in 2024," the fund wrote. "If increased participation by and deeper insights on behalf of the Canadian public are expected in CRTC proceedings launched to implement Parliament’s new communications laws, immediate and stable funding for the BPF is required." On Monday a coalition of six different groups – the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, the Forum for Research and Policy in Communications, Option consommateurs, the Union des consommateurs, the Manitoba branch of the Consumers Association of Canada, and the Consumers Council of Canada – filed a Part 1 application with the CRTC asking that the regulator force Rogers make a mandated contribution of $725,439 to the BPF by September of this year. Under the terms of the CRTC's approval of Rogers' acquisition of Shaw Communications Inc.'s broadcasting assets, the cable company was required to pay the contribution over three installments over the course of three years. If the CRTC were to require the company to pay the contribution in a single lump sum, it could keep the BPF afloat, the Part 1 application argues. “The CRTC can order public-interest organizations’ costs in its telecom proceedings to be paid by the companies involved in those proceedings,” PIAC executive director and general counsel John Lawford said in the application's cover letter, “but it does not yet have that same power in broadcasting." "Creating the BPF in 2011 with funding from two broadcasters has enabled groups like PIAC to undertake legal work in broadcasting matters, especially when these affect the prices paid by subscribers to cable and satellite TV.” The BPF has been warning about its financial stability for years, and sounded the alarm in March 2021, and again in August 2021 that its funding levels were unsustainable. -Reporting by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca and editing by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca

Public interest groups call for shored up Broadcasting Participation Fund

News | April 17, 2023

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Public interest groups call for shored up Broadcasting Participation Fund

News | April 17, 2023

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