Case information

Administrative law — Boards and Tribunals — Canadian Radio television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) — Jurisdiction — Judicial review — CRTC issuing an Order setting out the final rates that could be charged by the applicant telephone companies to the respondent competitors for wholesale high speed access services — What is the impact of the wholesale rates established in the Decision on billions of dollars of proposed investments in critically important infrastructure, as well as the ability of hundreds of thousands of Canadians in rural, remote, Indigenous and other underserved communities to gain necessary access to reliable high-speed internet services — How must administrative tribunals satisfy their duties of transparency and accountability in considering and implementing legally binding legislative and executive policy directives — How should a reviewing court scrutinize decisions of tribunals that do not satisfy their mandatory duty to consider and implement legally binding legislative and executive policy directives, and explain the manner in which they have done so — Telecommunications Act, SC 1993, c 38, ss. 7, 8, 24, 25, 27, 47 and 64 — Canada (Minister of Citizenship and immigration) v. Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65.

Case summaries are prepared by the Office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court of Canada (Law Branch). Please note that summaries are not provided to the Judges of the Court. They are placed on the Court file and website for information purposes only.

The CRTC regulates the provision of wholesale high-speed access services by large telephone and cable companies to small and medium sized independent Internet service providers, who use them to provide their own retail Internet and other services to customers. The CRTC also sets the rates that may be charged for those access services. On August 15, 2019, the CRTC issued Telecom Order CRTC 2019 288, Follow up to Telecom Orders 2016 396 and 2016 448 – Final rates for aggregated wholesale high speed access services, setting out the final rates that could be charged by the applicants to the respondent competitors and applying the rates retroactively. The applicant telephone companies and some large cable companies appealed the Order on the basis of alleged errors in law or jurisdiction, while the respondent medium and smaller Internet service providers defended the Order. The Federal Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal.