ARCHIVED - Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission - Supplementary Tables

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User Fees Reporting

User Fees

The only fee that the CRTC currently collects which is subject to the reporting requirements of the User Fees Act relates to the processing of access requests filed under the Access to Information Act.

2009-2010 User Fee – User Fees Act

				2008-2009					Planning Years
Name of Fee	Fee Type	Fee Setting Authority	Date Last Modified	Fore- casted Revenue	Actual Revenue ($000)	Full Cost ($000)	Performance Standards	Performance Results	Fiscal Year	Forecast Reve- nue ($000) Note1	Esti- mated Full Cost ($000)
Access to Information Fees	Other Products and Services (O)	Access to Information Act	1992	$0.4	$0.4	$187	Requests are completed as per the standards indicated in the Access to Information Act.  Section 7 of the Act states that access to a record requested under this Act shall, subject to sections 8, 9 and 11 be made available within thirty (30) days after the request is received.	During FY 2009-10, 77 new requests were received and 13 requests were carried over from FY 2008-2009: 87 requests were completed and processed in the following time frames: 40 completed within 30 days; 10 within 31 to 60 days; 25 within 61 to 120 days; 12 in over 120 days and 3 requests are still pending at the end of FY 2009-10.	2010-2011 2011-2012 2012-2013	$1 $1 $1	$200 $200 $200
			Total	$0.4	$0.4	$187			2010-2011 2011-2012 2012-2013	$1 $1 $1	$200 $200 $200

External Fees

External Fees and Policy on Service Standard for External Fees

CRTC assesses fees pursuant to the Broadcasting Licence Fee Regulations, 1997, and the Telecommunications Fees Regulations, 2010.  These regulations can be located on the CRTC web site at www.crtc.gc.ca. The CRTC has received a legal opinion indicating that the Part I broadcasting licence fees and telecommunications fees are considered to be external “regulatory fees” and not “user fees” as defined in the User Fees Act.  Thus these fees, and the external reporting of any information related to these fees, are not subject to the provisions of the User Fees Act (UFA), but rather the Treasury Board Policy on Service Standards for External Fees.

Furthermore, the Federal Court of Appeal dealt with a reference case regarding proposed changes to the CRTC Telecommunications Fees Regulations. In the Federal Court of Appeal’s decision issued on July 2, 2009 (http://decisions.fca-caf.gc.ca/en/2009/2009fca224/2009fca224.html) it was determined that changes to the Telecommunications Fees Regulations would not be subject to the provisions of the User Fees Act.  As a result of the Court’s decision, and a public process, the Commission decided with Treasury Board approval, to make the Telecommunications Fees Regulations, 2010, replacing the Telecommunications Fees Regulations, 1995. The Telecom Fees Regulations, 2010 came into force on 1 April 2010. For further details see Telecom Decision CRTC 2010-183 New Telecommunications Fees Regulations on CRTC web site http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2010/2010-183.htm

In order to be as comprehensive and transparent as possible with respect to CRTC external fees, information on broadcasting and telecommunications fees is being presented in the following table.

				2009-2010					Planning Years
Name of Fee	Fee Type	Fee Setting Authority	Date Last Modified	Forecasted Revenue	Actual Revenue ($000)	Full Cost ($000)	Performance Standards	Performance Results	Fiscal Year	Forecast Revenue  ($000)	Estimated Full Cost ($000)
Broadcasting Licence Fees		Broadcasting Act (Section 11)							2010-11	$33.5M	$33.5M
Part I	Regulatory (R)	Broadcasting Licence Fee Regulations 1997	1997	$33.5M	$33.5M	$33.5M			2011-12	$32.9M	$32.9M
									2012-13	$28.5M	$28.5M
Part II	Right & Privilege/ Regulatory Charges		2010 (note 1)	$   -	$434.0M (note  2)	$10.0M			2010-11	$ 100M	$10.0M (note 4)
									2011-12	$100M (note 3)	$10.0M (note 4)
									2012-13	$100M (note 3)	$10.0M (note 4)
Telecommu- nications Fee	Regulatory (R)	Telecommuni-cations Act (Section 68)		$31.0M	$31.0M	$31.0M
		Telecommuni-cations Fee Regulations 1995	2010						2010-11	$31.0M	$31.0M
									2011-12	$25.1M	$25.1M
									2012-13	$25.1M	$25.1M
			Total	$64.5M	$498.5M	$74.5M			2010-11	$64.5M	$64.5M
									2011-12	$58.0M	$58.0M
									2012-13	$53.6M	$53.6M

Note 1:  Pursuant to section 11 of the Broadcasting Act, the Commission received Treasury Board approval in order to enact the amendments to the Broadcasting Licence Fee Regulations, 1997 (the amended Regulations). The amended Regulations came into effect on 23 June 2010.  
Note 2:  This amount represents the Part II fees and accrued interest that would have been payable by broadcasters covering the three year period FY 2007-08, FY 2008-09
and FY 2009-10 (i.e. for those fees that would have been due and payable on 30 November 2007, 2008 and 2009).  This amounted to $433,876,668 ($415,279,112 in fees and
$ 18,568,699 in interest).  This total amount was also written off by the CRTC as a bad debt expense in accordance with the authority provided for in the Government’s
remission order.

Note 3:  Commencing in 2011, the Part II licence fee will be adjusted annually on a compound basis in accordance with the percentage increase or decrease, as the case may be, to the Consunmer Price Index for the calendar year prior to the year of the adjustment.

Note 4:  Industry Canada management costs associated with broadcasting activities.

Explanation of Revenue

The CRTC collects fees under the authority of the Broadcasting Act and Telecommunications Act and the regulations made pursuant to these Acts, namely the Broadcasting Licence Fee Regulations, 1997 and the Telecommunications Fees Regulations, 2010.  For fiscal year 2009-2010 the Part I broadcasting licence fees total $33.5 million made up of $21.8 million respendable and $11.7 million non-respendable revenues.  For the same period, telecommunications fees totalled $31 million made up of $18.8 million in respendable and $12.2 million in non-respendable revenues.

Broadcasting Licence Fees

Section 11 of the Broadcasting Act empowers the Commission to make regulations respecting licence fees. These regulations apply to all licensees other than those classes of undertakings specifically exempted under section 2 and section 11(3) of the fee regulations. Every licensee subject to the regulations is required to pay a Part I and a Part II licence fee to the Commission annually. For 2009-2010 the CRTC collected a total of $33.5 in Part I fees.

Part I licence fees

The Part I fee is based on the broadcasting regulatory costs incurred each year by the Commission and other federal departments or agencies, excluding Industry Canada spectrum management costs (which are recovered as a component of Part II licence fees). The Part I fee is equal to the aggregate of:

• the costs of the Commission’s broadcasting activity;
• the share of the costs of the Commission’s administrative activities that is attributable to its broadcasting activity; and
• the other costs included in the net cost of the Commission’s program attributable to its broadcasting activities, excluding the costs of regulating the broadcasting spectrum.

The estimated total broadcasting regulatory costs of the Commission are set out in the Commission’s Expenditure Plan published in Part III of the Estimates of the Government of Canada (i.e. Part III Report on Plans and Priorities).

There is an annual adjustment amount to the Part I fee to adjust estimated costs to actual expenditures. Any excess fees or shortfalls are credited or charged to the licensee in a following year’s invoice.

Part II licence fees

On October 7, 2009 the Minister of Canadian Heritage announced an out of court settlement regarding CRTC Part II broadcasting licence fees.

This brought an end to the litigation that commenced in 2003. As part of this agreement, in exchange for the plaintiffs agreeing to discontinue their lawsuit, the Government issued a remission order (2009-1715 dated October 7, 2009) with respect to: a) the amount of Part II licence fees and interest that would have been payable by applicable licensees during the Government’s fiscal years 2007-08, 2008-09 and 2009-10; and b) the amount of costs and interest awarded to Her Majesty in right of Canada against the appellants by the Federal Court of Appeal decision dated April 28, 2008. The CRTC has recorded those transactions required to address that part of the remission order dealing with fees and accrued interest, while Canadian Heritage has recorded those transactions related to the award of costs and accrued interest.

As part of this settlement, the Government also recommended that the CRTC develop a new, forward-looking fee Part II licence regime that would be capped at $100 million per year.  On December 22, 2009 the CRTC launched a public consultation process (Broadcasting Notice of Consultation CRTC 2009-797) to consider changes to the Broadcasting Licence Fee Regulations,1997 to implement this new fee regime. The amended regulations come into effect on June 23 2010. For further details on the amended Broadcasting Licence Fee Regulations, 1997 relating to Part II fees see Broadcasting Regulatory Policy CRTC 2010-476 on CRTC web site at http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2010/2010-476.htm

Telecommunications Fees

Section 68 of the Telecommunications Act sets out the authority for collecting telecommunications fees from carriers that the Commission regulates.
Under the Telecommunications Fees Regulations, 1995 each company that files tariffs must pay fees based on its operating revenue, as a percentage of the revenue of all the carriers that file tariffs. For 2009-2010, the CRTC collected $31 million in telecommunications fees.

On March 25, 2010 the CRTC issued Telecom Decision 2010-183 that announced the new Telecommunications Fees Regulations, 2010 (Regulations).  These new Regulations came into force on April 1, 2010 and replaced the Telecommunications Fees Regulations, 1995.  For further details see Telecom Decision CRTC 2010-183 New Telecommunications Fees Regulations on CRTC web site http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2010/2010-183.htm

The new fees Regulations require all telecommunications service providers (TSPs), or groups of related TSPs, with at least $10 million dollars in Canadian telecommunications service revenues (CTSR) to pay telecommunications fees, whether or not they file a tariff for approval with the Commission.  

The annual fees the CRTC collects is equal to the aggregate of:

• the cost of the Commission’s telecommunications activity;
• the share of the costs of the administrative activities that is attributable to its telecommunications activity; and  
• the other costs included in the net cost of the Commission’s program attributable to its telecommunications activity.

The Commission’s estimated total telecommunications regulatory costs are set out in the Commission’s Expenditure Plan published in Part III of the Estimates of the Government of Canada (i.e., Part III Report on Plans and Priorities). There is an annual adjustment amount to the telecommunications fees to adjust estimated costs to actual expenditures. Any excess fees or shortfalls are credited or charged to the carriers in a following year’s invoice.

Dispute Resolution – Fee Assessment

Under the CRTC’s dispute resolution process regarding the assessment of broadcasting licence fees and telecommunications fees:

• The first point of contact for fee payers concerning issues related to fee assessment or collection is the Commission’s Assistant Director, Financial Operations and Licence Fee Processing followed by the Director General Finance and Administrative Services. Fee payers may raise their concerns either by telephone conversation, e-mail or letter. To date the CRTC notes that the majority of fee payers concerns have been resolved at the staff level.
• Where an issue cannot be satisfactorily resolved at the staff level, fee payers are requested to document the nature of their concern in writing and submit it to the CRTC’s Secretary General for formal consideration. CRTC responds to all such letters.

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