TVA Sports Signal Cut on Bell TV | Class action authority against Cubecore and TVA

Twenty months after Bell Tele cut off the TVA sports signal to subscribers during the hockey playoffs, Quebec realized he would have to defend himself in court on Wednesday. The Superior Court was empowered to bring class action. A total of 100 million was claimed, or $ 250 for 400,000 subscribers.

Mary-Eve Fournier
Tap

The story began in the spring of 2019. In a trade dispute, Quebecore threatened to lose Bell Tale subscribers to TVA sports channels when the NHL playoffs began.

Although the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) ordered both companies to keep their services intact, the TVA Sports signal was jammed to 400,000 Bell Tele subscribers by the time Cubacore television began broadcasting. The first part of the NHL Playoffs, ” The Press.

Bell responded by giving its subscribers the English Channel Sports Net for free. The case ended up in the courts, which ordered Quebec to restore the signal, which happened.

The argument that Quebecor will one day be able to do justice without respecting the orders in force under the pretext that it will be appealed does not defeat the power of class action.

Extract from judgment

For the court, there is no doubt that “members of the group” are charming [les clients de Bell] They lost the service they paid for ”.

The judge recalled that the collective action was aimed at both compensating the victims and preventing reprehensible behavior. In this particular case, it was found that “the CRTC had issued two orders for the management of programming and did not respect these orders. This behavior is not a reasonable person to respect the law and not the decisions of the regulatory bodies responsible for enforcing it, ”he wrote.

Cubacore claims

During his appeals, Cubecore argued that the damage suffered by Bell subscribers was minimal and that it should not cause the court to worry. “The organization of collective action is valuable to the organization of individual actions but is sure to approach the court with minimal arguments,” the judge replied.

The Empire, led by Pierre Carl Peladio, claims that Bell subscribers have access to hockey games on the sports net. But the judge stressed that Bell subscribers “paid to see their piece in French”.

In addition, the judge said in his decision that Quebecore had appealed to Montreal Canadians not to participate in the playoffs that aired on TVA sports channels between April 10 and 12, 2019. “The removal of the Canadian is not yet scheduled Civil Code of Quebec As a means of reducing extinction or liability, ”the magistrate decides.

Joined the evening, a Quebec spokesman did not respond to our request for comment.

The representative of the class action, Catherine Valiquette, was a resident of Saint-Martతే-sur-le-Lock. The class action request was filed by Colex Legal’s Jean-Philippe Karen and Alessandra Esposito Chartrand.

“Our society will not tolerate a man in power taking justice into his own hands, at the expense of consumers who are the incidental victims of the war between the two giants of the telecommunications world,” M commented.^E Karen, the court “is happy to retain [son] Argument 2.