Advocacy groups call on CRTC to share schedule for upcoming Online Streaming Act proceedings

A coalition of nine advocacy groups and community associations are calling on the CRTC to clarify the timing of this year’s upcoming proceedings regarding the Online Streaming Act. In their letter submitted to the CRTC on Monday, the coalition requested the commission publish – by Feb. 1 – clearer guidance about the timing of the proceedings it is expecting to hold in 2024, including the estimated dates for when it will issue consultation notices, as well as which ones will include any public-hearings. They also asked the CRTC to keep the deadlines for each from overlapping, so they can have more time to focus their limited resources on each consultation. The joint-letter was signed by representatives for the Forum for Research and Policy in Communications, Friends of Canadian Media, the National Campus and Community Radio Association, OpenMedia, Public Broadcasting in Canada for the 21st Century, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, the Quebec English-language Production Council, Unifor, and Union des consommateurs. “It takes time to develop ideas, to discuss these, to gather and analyze the evidence relevant to those ideas and to set these ideas out in well-argued submissions,” wrote the coalition. They pointed to the three most recent Online Streaming Act consultations, which were not only announced on the same date, but shared the same or overlapping deadlines. They said this kind of scheduling, which only allowed one month for parties to put together interventions, is insufficient, “highly problematic,” unfair, and puts them at a disadvantage compared to “better-resourced organizations” like broadcasters, who are able to assign more staff or consultants to tackle the work. “Two CRTC proceedings with the same deadlines effectively cut in half the time available to individual organizations to consult on, gather evidence and draft interventions on each proceeding; tripling the number of submissions due at the same time or at overlapping times reduced available time by two-thirds,” the groups explained. To give all parties more time, the CRTC should “schedule proceedings one by one over a long period of time,” they wrote. While aware of the commission’s intent to move quickly on the proceedings and start implementing the modernized policies sometime this year, the groups laid out an example schedule showing that staggering proceedings would still be possible with a tight timeline. If the CRTC were to announce one consultation every four weeks, from Feb. 1, each with a one month deadline for interventions and then replies, the regulator could issue four decisions out of its five planned proceedings by July, the beginning of the 2024-25 broadcasting year. The last decision would come in August. Another way to help support the groups struggling to meet the CRTC’s tight deadlines would be to hold preparatory conferences before any hearings, in order to provide parties the “opportunity to consider the issues and the timing that the CRTC is contemplating,” they suggested. – Reporting by Phalen Tynes-MacDonald at pcreed@thewirereport.ca and editing by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca

Advocacy groups call on CRTC to share schedule for upcoming Online Streaming Act proceedings

News | January 23, 2024

Unlock all the Canadian telecom, broadcasting and digital media news you need.

FREE TRIAL

SUBSCRIBE

Inside The Wire Report

Information

Hill Times Publishing

Get in Touch With Us

Advocacy groups call on CRTC to share schedule for upcoming Online Streaming Act proceedings

News | January 23, 2024

Unlock all the Canadian telecom, broadcasting and digital media news you need.

FREE TRIAL

SUBSCRIBE

Related Stories

Freedom Mobile no longer pursuing full MVNO status

Federal arbitrator releases paid time political broadcast schedule

TV broadcasters denounce streamers’ appeals of CRTC’s broadcasting contribution decision

CRTC considering expanded mandate for Broadcasting Participation Fund

Reuse & Permissions

Inside The Wire Report

Information

Hill Times Publishing

Get in Touch With Us