In 2007, the Government of Canada ordered the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), Canada’s telecommunications (telecom) and broadcasting regulator, to create an independent, industry-funded agency to resolve complaints from consumers and small business retail telecom customers. Thus the CCTS was created, and we opened our doors in July 2007. Initially, only Canadian telecom providers with revenues greater than $10 million were required to join.

Since then we have accepted and resolved complaints from Canadian telecom consumers about all aspects of their home phone, long distance, internet and wireless services. The details of the CCTS’ activities in each year are contained in each year’s Annual Report. In 2015, we also began issuing Mid-year Reports to provide more timely reporting of our activities.

To ensure that the CCTS is meeting the needs of consumers and the industry, the CRTC holds public reviews of our structure and mandate. The first review was held in 2010, and in January 2011 the CRTC ruled that all Canadian telecom providers are required to join the CCTS for the next five years, when the next review would be held.

The next review took place in 2016, and in March the CRTC issued a decision expanding our mandate to include authority to accept complaints about TV services, effective September 1, 2017. In order to reflect our new mandate, we changed the name of the organization to Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services.

The CRTC issued four mandatory codes of conduct for service providers: the Deposit and Disconnection Code (issued in November 2011), the Wireless Code (issued in June 2013), the Television Service Provider Code (issued in January 2016) and the Internet Code (issued in July 2019). We administer the codes by applying the requirements of the codes when we investigate complaints, and we track and report publicly on service provider compliance with the codes.