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Broadcasting Notice of Consultation CRTC 2018-95

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Reference: 2018-95-1

Ottawa, 20 March 2018

Public record: 1011-NOC-2018-0095

Notice of application received

Across Canada

Deadline for submission of interventions/comments/answers: 19 April 2018

[Submit an intervention/comment/answer or view related documents]

The Commission has received the following application:

Bell Media Inc., on behalf of Corus Entertainment Inc.
Across Canada
Application 2017-1060-9

Application by Bell Media Inc. (Bell), on behalf of Corus Entertainment Inc. (Corus), for authority to effect a change in the ownership and effective control of 8504644 Canada Inc. (8504644) and 8504652 Canada Inc. (8504652), the respective licensees of the French-language discretionary services Historia and Séries+.

Bell is wholly owned by Bell Canada, a wholly owned subsidiary of BCE, a publicly held company. The effective control of Bell is exercised by BCE through its board of directors.

Corus is a publicly traded company that is effectively controlled by Mr. JR Shaw pursuant to the Shaw Family Living Trust agreement.

The transaction would be effected through a series of steps.

Step 1

Before the closing of the transaction, 8504644 and 8504652 would amalgamate to form Amalco.

Step 2

At closing, Bell would acquire all issued and outstanding shares of Amalco.

Step 3

Post closing, Amalco would become a wholly owned subsidiary of Bell.

Step 4

Amalco would be amalgamated into Bell.

Pursuant to the purchase agreement, the purchase price to acquire 8504644 and 8504652, the licensees, is $200,000,000.

The applicant stated that the value of the transaction is $202,695,232 and proposed a tangible benefits package representing 10% of the value of the transaction, namely $20,269,523.

As an exception to the Commission’s Tangible Benefits Policy (Broadcasting Regulatory Policy 2014-459), Bell requested to direct 82.8% of the benefits to two French-language components of certified independent production funds, namely the Bell Fund and the Fonds Harold Greenberg.

As announced in Broadcasting Notice of Consultation 2017-428, the Governor General in Council referred back to the Commission for reconsideration and hearing certain aspects of the decisions regarding the English- and French-language ownership groups. A determination regarding Canadian programming expenditures (CPE) and programs of national interest (PNI) requirements for the services in Bell’s French-language group will be made as part of the reconsideration. In the context of the present ownership application, the Commission will make a determination solely on the requirements regarding CPE and PNI for Historia and Séries+, as well as the eligibility of the services to be included in Bell’s French-language group.

Finally, as indicated in Broadcasting Information Bulletin 2008-8-2, the Commission can use one of three routes to process an application for share transfers that result in a change in effective control: the administrative route, a notice of applications received and an appearing public hearing. Should this notice generate interventions that raise substantive concerns and warrant further discussion, the Commission could determine at that time to proceed with an appearing public hearing.

Applicant’s address:

299 Queen Street West
Toronto, Ontario
M5V 2Z5
Fax: 416-384-4042
Email: kevin.goldstein@bellmedia.ca
Email to request electronic version of application: kevin.goldstein@bellmedia.ca

Procedure

Deadline for interventions, comments or answers

19 April 2018

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Rules of Practice and Procedure (the Rules of Procedure) apply to the present proceeding. The Rules of Procedure set out, among other things, the rules for content, format, filing and service of interventions, answers, replies and requests for information; the procedure for filing confidential information and requesting its disclosure; and the conduct of public hearings. Accordingly, the procedure set out below must be read in conjunction with the Rules of Procedure and related documents, which can be found on the Commission’s website under “Statutes and Regulations.” Broadcasting and Telecom Information Bulletin 2010-959 provides information to help interested persons and parties understand the Rules of Procedure so that they can more effectively participate in Commission proceedings.

An intervention or answer from a respondent must be received by the Commission and by the applicant on or before the above-mentioned date. An answer from a respondent must also be served on any other respondent.

Interventions and answers should clearly identify the application referred to and indicate whether parties support or oppose the application, or, if they propose changes to it, include the facts and grounds for their proposal.

The Commission encourages interested persons and parties to monitor the record of the proceeding, available on the Commission’s website, for additional information that they may find useful when preparing their submissions.

Submissions longer than five pages should include a summary. Each paragraph of all submissions should be numbered, and the line ***End of document*** should follow the last paragraph. This will help the Commission verify that the document has not been damaged during electronic transmission.

Pursuant to Broadcasting and Telecom Information Bulletin 2015-242, the Commission expects incorporated entities and associations, and encourages all Canadians, to file submissions for Commission proceedings in accessible formats (for example, text-based file formats that allow text to be enlarged or modified, or read by screen readers). To provide assistance in this regard, the Commission has posted on its website guidelines for preparing documents in accessible formats.

Submissions must be filed by sending them to the Secretary General of the Commission using only one of the following means:

by completing the
[Intervention/comment/answer form]

or

by mail to
CRTC, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0N2

or

by fax at
819-994-0218

A true copy of each intervention or answer from a respondent must be sent to the applicant and, in the case of a respondent to an application, to any other respondent.

Parties who send documents electronically must ensure that they will be able to prove, upon Commission request, that filing, or where required, service of a particular document was completed. Accordingly, parties must keep proof of the sending and receipt of each document for 180 days after the date on which the document is filed or served. The Commission advises parties who file or serve documents by electronic means to exercise caution when using email for the service of documents, as it may be difficult to establish that service has occurred.

In accordance with the Rules of Procedure, a document must be received by the Commission and all relevant parties by 5 p.m. Vancouver time (8 p.m. Ottawa time) on the date it is due. Parties are responsible for ensuring the timely delivery of their submissions and will not be notified if their submissions are received after the deadline. Late submissions, including those due to postal delays, will not be considered by the Commission and will not be made part of the public record.

The Commission will not formally acknowledge submissions. It will, however, fully consider all submissions, which will form part of the public record of the proceeding, provided that the procedure for filing set out above has been followed.

Important notice

All information that parties provide as part of this public process, except information designated confidential, whether sent by postal mail, facsimile, email or through the Commission’s website at www.crtc.gc.ca, becomes part of a publicly accessible file and will be posted on the Commission’s website. This information includes personal information, such as full names, email addresses, postal/street addresses, telephone and facsimile numbers, etc.

The personal information that parties provide will be used and may be disclosed for the purpose for which the information was obtained or compiled by the Commission, or for a use consistent with that purpose.

Documents received electronically or otherwise will be put on the Commission’s website in their entirety exactly as received, including any personal information contained therein, in the official language and format in which they are received. Documents not received electronically will be available in PDF format.

The information that parties provide to the Commission as part of this public process is entered into an unsearchable database dedicated to this specific public process. This database is accessible only from the web page of this particular public process. As a result, a general search of the Commission’s website with the help of either its own search engine or a third-party search engine will not provide access to the information that was provided as part of this public process.

Availability of documents

An electronic version of the application is available on the Commission’s website at www.crtc.gc.ca by selecting the application number within this notice. It is also available from the applicant, either on its website or upon request by contacting the applicant at its email address, provided above.

Electronic versions of the interventions and answers, as well as of other documents referred to in this notice, are available on the Commission’s website at www.crtc.gc.ca by visiting the “Have your say!” section, then selecting “our open processes.” Documents can then be accessed by clicking on the links in the “Subject” and “Related Documents” columns associated with this particular notice.

Documents are also available at the following address, upon request, during normal business hours.

Les Terrasses de la Chaudière
Central Building
1 Promenade du Portage
Gatineau, Quebec
J8X 4B1
Tel.: 819-997-2429
Fax: 819-994-0218

Toll-free telephone: 1-877-249-2782
Toll-free TDD: 1-877-909-2782

Secretary General

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