ARCHIVED - Broadcasting Procedural Letter Addressed to Various Parties
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Ottawa, 16 January 2018
Our reference: 1011-NOC2017-0359
BY E-MAIL
Lisa Anderson-Kellett
Chair
Deaf Wireless Canada Consultative Committee
lisa@deafwireless.ca
Frank Folino
President
Canadian Association of the Deaf
ffolino@ca
Megan McHugh
President
Canadian National Society of the Deaf-Blind
mchugh.mm@gmail.com
Elliott Richman
Assistant Director of Deaf Outreach
Deafness Advocacy Association Nova Scotia
daans@ns.sympatico.ca
Dear Sir / Mesdames,
RE: Procedural request relating to Call for comments on the Governor in Council’s request for a report on future programming distribution models – Broadcasting Notice of consultation CRTC 2017-359
This is in response to your letter sent to the Commission on 1 December 2017 requesting that the CRTC offer American Sign Language (ASL) and Langue des signes québecoise (LSQ) interpretations of Broadcasting Notice of Consultation CRTC 2017-359 (NoC 2017-359) immediately. Additionally, you request that submissions and/or interventions from interested Deaf, DeafBlind, and Hard of Hearing (DDBHH) Canadians be accepted two weeks after the ASL and LSQ interpretations are made publicly available. Alternatively, you have requested an extension of between three to five months in order to undertake your own ASL and LSQ interpretations.
The Commission may provide ASL and LSQ interpretations where doing so will ensure that DDBHH parties can participate effectively in a proceeding. Such interpretations are typically provided during oral hearings at which DDBHH parties appear, and they are particularly important where the proceeding may result in a decision or policy that specifically affects DDBHH Canadians.
Due to the circumstances of this case, the Commission does not intend to provide ASL and LSQ interpretations as requested. This proceeding will neither result in a Commission decision nor contain an oral hearing component. Instead, the Commission has been tasked with making a report to the Governor in Council and is required to do so within a strict time limit, namely 1 June 2018, as set out in Order in Council P.C. 2017-1195.
In order to achieve this objective, the Commission has opted for a paper process in order to facilitate broad and timely participation by the public, and has extended deadlines to file comments twice. Recognizing that interested parties might not have been able to file their comments in the first phase of the process, which was launched on 12 October 2017, the Commission stated, in Broadcasting Notice of Consultation 2017-359-2, that parties who were unable to do so could file their comments in the second phase of the proceeding. Those comments are due on 13 February, 2018.
These measures were designed to encourage meaningful participation by the public to inform the report, while ensuring that the Commission can meet the 1 June 2018 deadline imposed by the Governor in Council.
With respect to your request for an extension of three to five months to prepare your own interpretations, such an extension would not permit the Commission to meet the 1 June 2018 deadline.
Yours sincerely,
Scott Hutton
Executive Director, Broadcasting
c.c : Monica Auer, Forum for Research and Policy in Communications (execdir@frpc.net)
Gary Malkowski, Canadian Hearing Society (gmalkowski@chs.ca)
Anthony Tibbs, Media Access Canada (anthony@tibbs.ca)
Lui Greco, Canadian National Institue of the Blind (lui.greco@cnib.ca)
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