By Greg O’Brien
CHATHAM, Ont. – Back in 2017, the official reason former Ontario CRTC commissioner Raj Shoan was finally removed from his position is because he met privately and “inappropriately” with a person who had applied for a radio station licence prior to the decision on a licence being officially announced.
Readers of Cartt.ca back then will remember the whole story was longer and much more complicated than that (and we’re not going to rehash it here), but today, independent ISP TekSavvy said it has filed additional evidence with the federal government showing CRTC chair Ian Scott met inappropriately with Bell, Rogers and Shaw and should be removed from his position just like Shoan was.
The evidence filed is in support of the company’s May 28 petition to the Governor-in-Council over the CRTC’s recent wholesale third party internet access rates decision (Decision 2021-181) which reversed its 2019 final rates.
That decision shocked many, angered the independent TPIA providers and pleased the incumbent telecom and cable companies.
TekSavvy’s petition asks Cabinet to overrule “the CRTC’s arbitrary Decision 2021-181, to reinstate its evidence-based 2019 Final Rates Order and to remove Chair Ian Scott for bias,” reads the TekSavvy press release this morning.
That release continues: “TekSavvy noted that Mr. Scott held numerous ex parte meetings with litigants with open CRTC files, apparently unaccompanied, according to lobbying records. In particular, Mr. Scott held at least 11 reported solo meetings with Bell, Rogers or Shaw during the course of the CRTC’s open and active file, which resulted in Decision 2021-181 and that completely reversed its own evidence-based, years-in-the-making 2019 Final Rates Order. The decision also directly undermined Cabinet’s mandate and direction to the CRTC to promote affordable pricing and competition.”
As reported recently by the Toronto Star, “at least one of Mr. Scott’s ex parte meetings took place in a social setting, alone, with the CEO of one of the primary litigants in the open file. Mr. Scott met one-on-one with Mirko Bibic, then chief operating officer of Bell (and now CEO) at D’Arcy McGee’s, an Ottawa bar on December 19, 2019. The meeting occurred just one week after the CRTC opened an active file to hear Bell’s application to reverse the 2019 Final Rates Order, which the regulator arbitrarily approved in Decision 2021-181,” reads the TekSavvy evidence.
Other former CRTC commissioners were also quoted in the media saying such meetings are considered off-side and normally a third party such as CRTC’s general counsel, should be present. TekSavvy filed that with the government, too.
TekSavvy submitted to cabinet “Mr. Scott’s ex parte meeting with Mr. Bibic is also clearly offside the standards of conduct required by the Governor-in-Council for its appointees to the CRTC, as confirmed by Cabinet’s termination of one Commissioner’s appointment for far less egregious conduct in 2017,” it said. “In fact, both the Federal Court and Cabinet have explicitly recognized the concern of bias raised by ex parte meetings between Commissioners and stakeholders with open files before the CRTC, as the Federal Court described such conduct as “very troubling’.”
Back in 2017, when Shoan was dismissed for the second time, the order removing him, which we reported on at the time, said the Governor-in-Council has concluded his “actions with respect to inappropriate contact with CRTC stakeholders and his lack of recognition of and disregard for the impact of that contact on the reputation and integrity of the CRTC (the inappropriate contact ground) are fundamentally incompatible with his position and that he no longer enjoys the confidence of the Governor in Council to be a Commissioner of the CRTC.”
TekSavvy is pleading with cabinet to take the steps to overturn the CRTC’s arbitrary Decision 2021-181, reinstate its 2019 rates order and to remove Scott as chair, as soon as possible.
“The CRTC’s role is to be an independent arbiter. The 2019 Final Rates Order, which was based on years of process and mountains of evidence showed the CRTC had the independence and expertise to set proper wholesale rates,” said Andy Kaplan-Myrth, TekSavvy’s vice-president of regulatory and carrier affairs. “Now they’re having beers with Bell and making up numbers, while completely undermining this government’s promises to Canadians.
“It’s an outrage.”
We have asked the CRTC, Heritage Canada and ISED for response to this and will update this story if and when we hear back.
Update: An ISED spokesperson responded to our request for comment, saying only, “The Government of Canada has received one petition appealing the CRTC’s most recent decision. Given that petition, and the fact that other appeals may be forthcoming, no further comment can be made on the matter at this time.”
