ARCHIVED -  Procedural Letter

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Ottawa, 19 October 2012

To: Corus Entertainment Inc.
Gary Maavara, Executive Vice-President & General Counsel, Corporate Secretary
gary.maavara@corusent.com

TELUS Communications Inc.
Ann Mainville-Neeson, Director, Broadcast Regulation
Ann.Mainville-Neeson@telus.com

Re: Application by TELUS Communications Inc. (TELUS) for the enforcement of s. 6.3 of the Pay Television Regulations, 1990 against Corus Entertainment Inc., (Corus).
(Application number 2012-1195-3)

The Commission received a submission dated 12 October 2012 from Corus Entertainment Inc. (Corus) with respect to the above-referenced application as well as a response from TELUS Communications Company (TELUS), also dated 12 October 2012.

In its submission, Corus requests that the contract filed by TELUS as an appendix to the latter’s 9 October 2012 reply comments (“Reply Comments”) be stricken from the record of the proceeding associated with the TELUS application. In support of its request, Corus argues that it had not made statements about a contractual issue in its 1 October 2012 answer (“Answer”) to the application and that the contractual issue is not relevant for the purposes of assessing compliance with section 6.3 of the Pay Television Regulations, 1990. Corus also noted that TELUS’ Reply Comments ignored Corus’ reference to the ‘TELUS Content Protection document’ and suggested that the Commission request TELUS to file a copy of both the February 2011 and February 2012 dated versions of this document. Corus submitted that a comparison of the language contained in these two versions as well as a comparison between the document and the “rights contract language” filed with its Answer would serve to illustrate that the matter under consideration is complex and evolving.

In its rebuttal, TELUS submitted that its filing of the agreement between itself and Corus served to directly counter statements set out in Corus’ Answer. TELUS submitted, however, that it would prefer to strike the agreement from the record of the proceeding rather than undergo a process to determine the legitimacy of its filing. TELUS further submitted that while it would be willing to file the technical specifications of its service, it noted that any changes made to these specifications were trivial and irrelevant. TELUS stated that, in any event, it would agree to “meet any of the technical specifications to be entitled to offer the same content on the same basis as Shaw.”

Taking into consideration that TELUS has expressed a willingness to remove from the record of this proceeding the agreement filed as appendix A to its Reply Comments rather than engage further process and given that the Commission does not require this document in order to complete its analysis of this particular application, the agreement in question will be removed from the record of this proceeding.

Moreover, since the aforementioned agreement has been removed from the record of the proceeding and since TELUS has agreed to meet any technical specifications required in order to offer the same content on the same basis as Shaw, it is not necessary that TELUS file copies of the February 2011 and February 2012 versions of its “Content Protection” document.

 

Sincerely,

[Original signed by]

Sheehan Carter
Senior Manager, TV Operations

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