Broadcasting - Procedural Letter addressed to Aubrey Clarke (Envision Urban)
Ottawa, 10 June 2021
BY EMAIL: aubrey.clarke@envisionurban.com
Mr. Aubrey Clarke
President
Envision Urban
Re: Broadcasting Notice of Consultation CRTC 2021-114 – Procedural request
Dear Mr. Clarke:
This is in response to your procedural request correspondence dated 31 May 2021 requesting the addition of the contents of the online petition referenced in your 24 March 2021 intervention. Specifically, you requested the addition of the following documents to the public record of Broadcasting Notice of Consultation CRTC 2021-114 in relation to items 3 and 4 regarding the acquisition of CKFG-FM Toronto by 2784486 Ontario Limited:
- a list of signatories to a petition hosted on www.change.org requesting that the commercial radio station CKFG-FM Toronto continue to be operated and owned by members of the Black community;
- a list of comments provided by some signatories to the petition; and
- 15 letters from public officials that were submitted in support of the petition.
In support of your request, you submitted that you intended, and made several attempts, to file the petition and the letters as attachments to your intervention filed with the Commission on 24 March 2021, but that the documents were not uploaded. In your request, you described a number of technical difficulties that you experienced when submitting the attachments, as well as the reasons why you were not aware of this error until recently.
The Commission notes that this request was filed after the close of the intervention period. The deadline for the submission of interventions/comments/answers in this proceeding was 21 April 2021, and the public hearing was held on 27 May 2021.
Nonetheless, as per section 7 of Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Rules of Practice and Procedure, the Commission may dispense with or vary these rules if it is of the opinion that considerations of public interest or fairness permit.
The Commission accepts that the documents are relevant to this proceeding and that you made good faith efforts to submit them on time. The Commission also notes that a reference to the documentation was provided in the intervention that was filed with the Commission, along with a link to the petition, so that stakeholders could have accessed the documents online. Accordingly, adding the documents to the public file would ensure that the public record is complete, that the public process is transparent, and that all the documents are accessible in one place.
In light of the above, the Commission is of the view that approving this request is in the public interest. Accordingly, the Commission approves your procedural request seeking to have the petition, as well as letters from public officials, filed on the public record for this proceeding.
By copy of this letter, the Commission also accords the applicant with the right to file a reply by 17 June 2021. The Commission reminds the applicant that any reply must be restricted to the points raised in the above-mentioned documents.
Sincerely,
Claude Doucet
Secretary General
- Date modified: