QUEBEC CITY – Thirteen months after the CRTC ruled that the controversial, market-leading CHOI-FM did not deserve to have its licence renewed and three weeks after the Federal Court of Appeal agreed, the station has hooked itself back up to the “judicial respirator”.
The station’s owners, GENEX Communications, Wednesday received the consent of the Court of Appeal to an agreement reached with the federal Attorney-General on an extension of its licence.
This allows GENEX to file an application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, thus “reconnecting the judicial respirator” as Court of Appeal Justice Gilles Létourneau put it, and keeping CHOI on the air until a decision on its application is made.
Given the various time delays involved in filing and hearing arguments, it will be at least spring 2006 before CHOI’s next moment of truth.
The CRTC had ruled in August 2004 that CHOI’s licence should not be renewed because of its repeated violation of the terms of its licence and flagrant disregard for broadcast rules and the industry’s code of ethics.
Despite numerous warnings, through two licence terms, the CRTC said the station’s hosts were “relentless in the use of the public airwaves to insult and ridicule people”.
Earlier this month, as reported by www.cartt.ca, the Federal Court of Appeal upheld the ruling, firmly rejecting the station’s arguments that the CRTC had overstepped its bounds and had violated constitutional protection of freedom of expression.
“The appellant [GENEX] makes much of the guarantee of freedom of expression…and seems to want to treat it as unqualified, something the courts have never recognized,” wrote Justice Gilles Létourneau.
“I do not think I am mistaken in saying that freedom of expression, freedom of opinion and freedom of speech do not mean freedom of defamation, freedom of oppression and freedom of opprobrium.
“Nor do I think I am mistaken in saying that the right to freedom of expression under the Charter does not require that the State or the CRTC become accomplices in or promoters of defamatory language or violations of the rights to privacy, integrity, human dignity and reputation by forcing them to issue a broadcasting licence used for those purposes.
“To accept the appellant’s proposition would mean using the Charter to make the State or its agencies an instrument of oppression or violation of the individual rights to human dignity, privacy and integrity on behalf of the commercial profitability of a business.”
Glenn Wanamaker is www.cartt.ca’s Quebec Editor.
