The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission ( CRTC, French: Conseil de la radiodiffusion et des télécommunications canadiennes ) is a public organisation in Canada with mandate as a regulatory agency for broadcasting and telecommunications.

The CRTC regulates all Canadian broadcasting and telecommunications activities and enforces rules it creates to carry out the policies assigned to it ; the best-known of these is probably the Canadian content rules.

The CRTC reports to the Parliament of Canada through the Minister of Canadian Heritage, which is responsible for the Broadcasting Act, and has an informal relationship with Industry Canada, which is responsible for the Telecommunications Act.

In many cases, such as the cabinet-directed prohibition on foreign ownership for broadcasters and the legislated principle of the predominance of Canadian content, these acts and orders often leave the CRTC less room to change policy than critics sometimes suggest, and the result is that the commission is often the lightning rod for policy criticism that could arguably be better directed at the government itself.

However, the CRTC is also sometimes erroneously criticized for CBSC decisions — for example, the CRTC was erroneously criticized for the CBSC's decisions pertaining to the airing of Howard Stern's terrestrial radio show in Canada in the late 1990s, as well as the CBSC's controversial ruling on the Dire Straits song " Money for Nothing ".

In a major May 1999 decision on " New Media ", the CRTC held that under the Broadcasting Act the CRTC had jurisdiction over certain content communicated over the internet including audio and video, but excluding content that is primarily alphanumeric such as emails and most webpages.

In May 2011, in response to the increase presence of Over-the-Top ( OTT ) programming, the CRTC put a call out to the public to provide input on the impact OTT programming is having on Canadian content and existing broadcasting subscriptions through satellite and cable.

The evidence was inconclusive, suggesting that an increased availability of OTT options is not having a negative impact on the availability or diversity of Canadian content, one of the key policy mandates of the CRTC, nor are there signs that there has been a significant decline of televisions subscriptions through cable or satellite.

While landline and mobile telephone providers must also be majority-owned by Canadians under the federal Telecommunications Act, the CRTC is not responsible for enforcement of this provision.

In fact, the commission does not require licences at all for telephone companies, and CRTC approval is therefore not generally required for the sale of a telephone company, unless said company also owns a broadcast licence.

Despite popular perception that the CRTC banned Sirius Canada from broadcasting Howard Stern's program, this is not the case.

The CRTC is run by up to 13 full-time ( including the chairman, the vice-chairman of broadcasting, and the vice-chairman of telecommunications ) and six part-time commissioners appointed by the Cabinet for renewable terms of up to five years.

a state regulatory body called Krajowa Rada Radiofonii i Telewizji ( The National Radio and Television Committee ), which is similar to CRTC in Canada.

Under the Broadcasting Act, a network is defined as " any operation where control over all or any part of the programs or program schedules of one or more broadcasting undertakings is delegated to another undertaking or person " and must be licensed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission ( CRTC ).

Only CBC / Radio-Canada, TVA and APTN are officially considered national networks by the CRTC, while V is a provincial network in Quebec.

While Canadian TV stations are technically required to identify themselves over the air by their call letters, the rule is rarely enforced by the CRTC.

This significant decline from over 2000 just a few years ago is attributable both to major cable companies acquiring smaller distributors and to a recent change in CRTC rules by which independent cable operators with fewer than 2, 000 subscribers are no longer required to operate under full CRTC licences.

This is an exemption granted by the CRTC to previously licensed companies that continue to meet certain conditions, and does not mean that anybody can simply set up their own small cable company without CRTC approval.

Although this is sometimes controversial, Canadian cable companies are required by the CRTC to practise simultaneous substitution when a Canadian channel and a non-Canadian channel ( which is usually American ) are airing the same program at the same time.

The CRTC first commissioned simsubbing in 1972, and it is sometimes erroneously called simulcasting, the name of a practice different from simultaneous substitution in that there is no signal replacement.

His show was dumped a year later, on August 27, 1998, after numerous complaints to the CRTC about politically incorrect remarks interpreted by complainants as sexist and homophobic, despite the fact that the show ran on a tape delay with more controversial comments being censored, which sometimes resulted in minutes of dead air.

In his testimony, Canwest president Leonard Asper blamed the current rules for the poor financial condition of Canada's broadcast television stations, a position which has subsequently been adopted and addressed through rule changes by the CRTC and FCC.

Unlike in the United States, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission ( CRTC ) and Industry Canada have not set any requirement for maintaining AMPS service in Canada.

In 1976, jurisdiction over telecommunications services, most of which were then delivered by monopoly common carriers ( for example, telephone companies ), was transferred to it from the Canadian Transport Commission although the abbreviation CRTC remained the same.

The CRTC does not directly regulate rates, quality of service issues, or business practices for Internet service providers.

* CHOI-FM: The CRTC announced it would not renew the licence of the popular CHOI-FM radio station in Quebec City, after having previously sanctioned the station for failing to uphold its promise of performance and then, during the years following, receiving about 50 complaints about offensive behaviour by radio jockeys which similarly contravened CRTC rules on broadcast hate speech.

Satellite radio poses a more complicated problem for the CRTC.

In November 2004, the CBC, in partnership with Standard Broadcasting and Sirius Satellite Radio, applied to the CRTC for a license to introduce satellite radio service to Canada.

Despite the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission ( CRTC )' s current TV station ownership restrictions ( one station per owner per language per market ), Canwest was permitted to maintain CHCH's coverage of other markets throughout most of Ontario.

On February 25, 2009, CTV announced that, given the ongoing structural problems facing the conventional television sector in Canada and the current global economic crisis, it will not be applying to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission ( CRTC ) for renewal of the licences of CKNX-TV and its sister station CHWI-TV in Wheatley / Windsor.

On February 25, 2009, CTV announced that, given the ongoing structural problems facing the conventional television sector in Canada and the current global economic crisis, it will not be applying to the CRTC for renewal of the licences of CHWI-TV, CKNX-TV and CKX-TV.

( It is not clear how this would have occurred under current CRTC regulations, as Rogers already owns two AM stations in Toronto, CFTR and CJCL, the maximum permitted in a single market.

Licensed as The Canadian Documentary Channel on November 24, 2000 by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission ( CRTC ); it was launched as Documentary Channel on September 7, 2001 under the majority ownership of Corus Entertainment along with the current owners.

The CRTC decided to move up the date, after a report stated that the current 819 area code would be exhausted by then.

The station originally launched as CJBR in 1947 and changed to its current callsign in the 1990s after receiving CRTC approval to broadcast at 101. 5 MHz.

In 1967, the station adopted its current callsign, and received approval from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission ( CRTC ) to broadcast at nighttime ; due to clear channel rules, the station remained on 710 during the day, but shifted to 730 at night.

As a result of public hearings during 1997 on the issue, it became evident to the CRTC that there were locations that considered their phone service to be inferior.

The CRTC also found that Northwestel's operating area was entirely a high-cost serving area, and that supplementary funding may be required to raise the level of phone service and to maintain that service in the face of competition.

Complaints against broadcasters, such as concerns around offensive programming, are dealt with by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council ( CBSC ), an independent broadcast industry association, rather than by the CRTC, although CBSC decisions can be appealed to the CRTC if necessary.

On October 5, 2011 the CRTC released their findings that included consultations with stakeholders from the telecommunications industry, media producers, and cultural leaders among others.

Although it primarily accepted the industry proposal, the CRTC required a permissive dialling period of four months, with consistent network announcements to consumers, instead of the proposed two month period.

The Canadian broadcasting industry, including all programming services ( over-the-air or otherwise ) and all distributors, is regulated in regards to ownership and content by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission ( CRTC ), which in most cases issues licences for each such operation.