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Broadcasting - Staff Letter addressed to Peggy Tabet (Quebecor Media Inc.) and Daniel Errington (Accessible Media Inc.)

Gatineau, 18 June 2024

BY EMAIL

Peggy Tabet
Vice President
Regulatory and Environmental Affairs
Quebecor Media Inc.
tabet.peggy@quebecor.com

Daniel Errington
President and CEO
Accessible Media Inc.
david.errington@ami.ca

Subject: Procedural Letter – Undue Preference Dispute - Application 2024-0146-2

Peggy Tabet,
Daniel Errington,

This letter is in response to Quebecor’s correspondence dated 31 May 2024, in which Quebecor requested that the unsigned Memorandum of Understanding between AMI and Quebecor be stricken from the record.

As indicated in section 31(2) of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Rules of Practice and Procedure (the Rules), the party requesting the confidentiality designation must make the designation at the time that they file the document that contains the information. Section 30 requires the Commission to make submissions available for public inspection if they are not subject to a confidentiality designation.

AMI did not designate the draft MOU as confidential. Accordingly, the draft MOU has been treated as not confidential in accordance with the Rules and is available on the public record.

In Procedures for filing confidential information and requesting its disclosure in Commission proceedings, Broadcasting and Telecom Information Bulletin CRTC 2010-961, 23 December 2010, the Commission indicated that, in determining whether disclosure of the information is in the public interest, it would consider whether the information would be likely to result in specific direct harm and whether that harm would outweigh the public interest in disclosure. Where the specific direct harm does not outweigh the public interest in disclosure, the Commission will generally require that the information be disclosed.

In the current circumstances, Videotron has been in possession of the Application since April 4th, 2024 and the MOU was not made public on the Commission’s website until May 1st, 2024. A request for confidential designation was only made on May 31, 2024. In addition, the MOU in question was never signed by the parties and there is currently no negotiated carriage agreement.

As per section 30 of the Rules, documents that are not labelled as confidential by the party that submits them must be made available to the public. This advances the public interest of having proceedings that are as open and transparent as possible. Videotron claims that the release of this document will harm its competitiveness and leave it susceptible to unspecified serious financial losses. However, CRTC staff is of the view that Videotron has not demonstrated any specific, direct harm that could occur that would outweigh the public interest of transparency in proceedings in this instance.

Considering the above, upon preliminary review CRTC staff is of the view that there is no basis on which to withdraw the subject document. In accordance with rule 30 in the CRTC Rules of Practice and Procedure requiring the Commission to make public submissions not designated as confidential by the filing party, the above-noted document will remain on the public file of the current proceeding.

A copy of this letter and all related correspondence will be added to the public record.

Yours sincerely,

Lina Cipro
Senior Policy Analyst, Alternative Dispute Resolution, Broadcasting

cc:
Kevin Goldstein, kevin@goldsteincommunicatinslaw.com
Daniel, Pye, daniel.pye@crtc.gc.ca
Martin, Joly, martin.joly@crtc.gc.ca
Welch, Matthew, matthew.welch@crtc.gc.ca
Cipro, Lina, lina.cipro@crtc.gc.ca

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