By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – A coalition of public interest groups has asked the CRTC on Friday to consider a financial plan for a fund that bankrolls their involvement in broadcasting hearings.
Public interest participation in those hearings is funded through a not-for-profit organization known as the Broadcasting Participation Fund (BPF), which spawned out of Bell’s purchase of CTV network assets in 2011. The problem for the fund, according to its proponents, is that it relies on money, called tangible benefits, that only comes as a condition of approving broadcasting acquisitions that are now uncommon.
Interest groups have said the fund is in dire financial straits because of that reality and have requested that tangible benefits owed to the fund from the Rogers acquisition of Shaw be expedited. But the coalition said the tap is expected to close in 2025, when the last of those benefits is expected to be delivered.
So, the coalition is asking the regulator to enact regulations that force a class of broadcasters with revenues in excess of $1 billion in the 2023/24 broadcast year to remit a one-time payment of $6 million to the BPF by December 31, 2024 for administrative expenses, and $1 million plus inflation in annual payments to the fund to pay for public interest participation at hearings.
If there’s less money distributed from the fund to hearing participants and the fund is left with double the annual amount or $2 million over two consecutive years, then the CRTC can order the class of broadcasts to forgo making the annual contribution.
The group proposes the commission issue a notice of consultation about the application in early December with a deadline for comments and replies by mid-February 2024.
“This timing provides the CRTC with six months to issue a determination about the proposal and to implement it by 1 September 2024,” the application said. “Taking these steps enables the CRTC to meet Parliament’s concern for the financial support of public-interest participants in the CRTC’s broadcasting proceedings.”
The group said the CRTC – with the passage of the Online Streaming Act, which forces foreign contributions to Canadian content – can now enact such regulations to move beyond tangible benefits to something more sustainable.
But it’ll need money to participate in those proceedings.
“From 2013 to 2022 the costs awarded by the BPF-FPR to applicants have amounted to an average of $477,573 per year,” the Friday application said. “Using this average as a proxy for the remainder of 2023 and for each of 2024 and 2025, the number of CRTC public consultations already announced establishes that a risk exists that the BPF-FPR will find itself operating at a loss by the end of 2024 and in 2025, even with the two Rogers’ payments and the final SiriusXM payment.”
The BPF has been sounding the alarm about its precarious financial position since 2016. It got so problematic that the fund has twice withheld 25 per cent of the costs awarded to applicants to avoid suspending operations.
The BPF eventually returned the first set of withheld payments last December and announced another payment for this month.
“Public-interest participants whose costs were reimbursed by the BPF-FPR in 2021, 2022 and 2023 have already effectively financed the BPF-FPR’s operations – and in the absence of any other reasonable alternative, the BPF-FPR may decide to again withhold applicants’ approved costs to avoid suspending or ending its operations,” said the group’s Friday application.
Rogers made to the BPF last month its first of three annual payments of just under a quarter-million-dollars last month as part of its acquisition of Shaw’s broadcasting assets. The CRTC has yet to make a decision on the public interest groups’ application to speed up the payments to the fund.
SiriusXM is expected to make a final payment of about $120,000 by May 2024.
The board of the BPF said earlier this year that the fund had only $330,000 to its name at the beginning of the year – a fraction of the more than $700,000 it said is required to operate in a busy year.
Two years ago, the CRTC declined an application by PIAC and the FRPC asking it to launch a proceeding into the sustainability of the fund.
The organizations that signed onto Friday’s application consist of the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Interest Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), Consumers Council of Canada, the Forum for Research and Policy in Communications (FRPC), OpenMedia, Option consommateurs, Public Interest Advocacy Centre, Public Interest Law Centre (PILC), and the Union des consommateurs.
