Pending class action from prisoners’ families against Bell lands on CRTC desk

On a day in July, 2016, a man received eight long-distance collect calls from his son, who was in pre-trial custody and in solitary confinement in the Ontario Kenora Jail. The father was charged $146.60 by BCE Inc. for the calls. Nine days later, the same father was charged $27.91 for a 20-minute phone call. In November, 2017, a woman in Ottawa was charged $24.28 for a 19-minute phone call she received from a detention centre in Toronto. Does the CRTC have the power to regulate rates like these? If so, were these rates just and reasonable? If they were not, are those — and many like them — who were charged these rates entitled to damages, financial remedies, credits and reimbursements? These are among the questions posed to the CRTC in a new Part 1 complaint filed with the CRTC in October and posted to the CRTC’s website late last week. The complaint is connected to a class action lawsuit currently pending in the Ontario courts which alleges that during the period Bell held the contract for the telephone systems for people detained in Ontario correctional facilities between 2013 and 2021, the rates Bell charged for collect calls violated provincial consumer protection legislation and were “unconscionable.” Both Bell and the Ontario government argued that the class action should be stayed for lack of jurisdiction. The Ontario Superior Court agreed, and stayed the action pending a decision from the CRTC about whether or not to accept the dispute. In an affidavit appended to the Part 1 application, one of the defendants in the class action lawsuit – a resident of the Lac Seul First Nation in Ontario – detailed the bills he received from Bell during the four and a half years his son was held in pre-trial custody at the Thunder Bay Correctional Jail and the Kenora Jail. Among them are some very expensive phone bills. In September, 2013, the bill came to $697.02 in collect calls. In July, 2016 the bill was $552.22. In August, 2016 it was $642.39, and in January. 2017, the man was charged $1,002.52 for collect calls from his son. “In order to pay the collect call fees on my phone bills I had to take on extra work, such as chopping firewood. The collect call fees became a source of family stress, anxiety and financial difficulty for myself and my family,” Ransome Capay wrote in his affidavit for the court. At the same time as Capay was paying for the collect calls from his son, he wrote in his affidavit, he was paying $57-80 per month for a long-distance plan with Bell, and an internet plan with Bell for about $58 per month. In the Part 1 application, Goldblatt Partners LLP and Sotos LLP acting on behalf of Capay and Vanessa Fareau ask that the regulator determine whether it or the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-Television Services (CCTS) should hear the complaint. The first question at hand for the CRTC, should it decide to take up the complaint, is whether or not long-distance rates in Ontario prisons are forborne from regulation. Second, the CRTC must decide whether or not it can set retroactive long-distance rates for calls from the prisoners for the period between June 2013, and July 2021 when Bell held the contract. If the commission rules that the rates were forborne and that it does have the power to set retroactive rates, the applicants further request that the CRTC convene a further hearing to receive evidence and submissions on the setting of the applicable rate and the awarding of damages. Submissions in the proceeding are due on Jan. 11. – Reporting by Michael Lee-Murphy and editing by Phalen Tynes-MacDonald at pcreed@thewirereport.ca

Pending class action from prisoners’ families against Bell lands on CRTC desk

News | November 28, 2023

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Pending class action from prisoners’ families against Bell lands on CRTC desk

News | November 28, 2023

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