OTTAWA – Today, the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review (BTLR) panel announced it has extended the period in which it will receive written comments until January 11th, 2019, Cartt.ca has learned.
On Thursday, November 1st, at the 16th Annual Conference of the International Institute of Communications, held in Ottawa, the panel participated in a town hall with members in the Industry. At that forum, they heard from consumer groups that lack the resources of big companies needed some more time to fully participate in the review process. The deadline for written comments had been set on for November 30th.
(UPDATE: While Cartt.ca first reported on this extension Monday morning, the BTLR web page has now been updated to include the announcement of the extra time.)
“Our participation in such forums is to hear from stakeholders not only on policy issues but on process issues. We were pleasantly surprised by the tsunami of interest in our process. Many had complained about tight deadlines, said Janet Yale,” chair of the panel (pictured at the conference last week).
Factoring in two CRTC hearings in the same timeframe (one just finished on telecom sales practices, another upcoming for an ethnic must-carry channel on November 26th) can be quite demanding especially for smaller organizations.
“For example, we heard from Aboriginal and First Nations groups that in order to participate they have to consult their community in order to get a more fulsome record, we felt an extension was warranted,” she added.
The rest of the deadlines for the “What we heard” report and the final report remain unchanged for June 2019 and January 2020.
