Language representation at CRTC raised to Yale panel

Better representation at the CRTC of official language minority communities is a concern a number of francophone groups have raised to the panel reviewing Canada’s communications framework. The Alliance des Producteurs Francophones du Canada (APFC) is asking the government to prevent “French under-representation” at the CRTC, according to its recently-published written submission to the broadcasting and telecommunications legislative review panel. It proposes adding statutory requirements for two CRTC commissioners to represent francophone communities located outside of Quebec and anglophone communities in Quebec, respectively, to boost official minority language community representation on the commission. The brief says that official language minority communities are currently structurally less likely to be represented on the commission. The group also warned the panel that a “deficit of francophone representatives” a few years ago hampered the commission from reviewing and modernizing French radio regulations, following the departure of vice-chairman Tom Pentefountas. A 2015 hearing on French-language commercial radio regulations was stalled for roughly a year when the commission was short of the necessary three French-speaking representatives to create a panel review for the hearings, according to a Dec. 6, 2016 Financial Post article. APFC said the process was eventually rolled into a larger one that includes English-language regulations. There are currently eight CRTC commissioners, with one seat representing both B.C. and Yukon vacant. Three of the eight are francophone -- Yves Dupras, Caroline Simard and Monique Lafontaine -- while others on the commission, like Christianne Laizner, are bilingual, a CRTC spokesperson confirmed. Dupras, the current commissioner for Quebec, will soon see his term end in August this year. The regulator can have up to 13 commissioners in total, according to its governing laws. La Fédération des Communautés Francophones et Acadienne (FCFA) went a bit further in its proposals to structure the commission. It’s asking for changes to the commission’s structure so the CRTC has “at least one commissioner” from each of the following: the community broadcasting industry, a francophone minority community, the English-speaking community of Quebec, and some sort of boosted representation of Indigenous peoples established through consultations. That would “promote better representation of the industry” as a whole, its submission said in French. Adding an Indigenous CRTC commissioner or dedicating staff to Indigenous issues are ideas that have been floated in the past to bolster representation at the regulator. A Forum for Research and Policy in Communications (FRPC) report notes there has only been one known Indigenous person appointed to the commission since 1968. Somewhat similarly to the two francophone groups’ panel proposals, the Association Quebecoise de la Production Mediatique (AQPM) suggests that a new communications framework should require the CRTC to prove that it takes the “particularities” of the French-language market into account when it makes decisions. That could be done by requiring it to report on that annually to the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages or to Parliament, its submission suggests. It said various Quebec stakeholders have long called for it to treat the two language markets differently when it develops regulatory policies in areas like Canadian program spending and French-language programming. The Liberal government’s expert panel reviewing Canada’s broadcasting and telecommunications laws must issue its final report and recommendations by Jan. 31, 2020, while it will post a review of its consultations by July. — With reporting by Kyle Duggan at kduggan@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Language representation at CRTC raised to Yale panel

Broadcast | February 12, 2019

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Language representation at CRTC raised to Yale panel

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