Purpose

The CCTS’ mission is to provide outstanding dispute resolution service to Canadian consumers, telecommunications, and television service providers. We help resolve disputes and conduct our work in keeping with our values to be effective, rigorous, competent, unbiased, fair, responsive, and accessible. The purpose of this policy is to ensure that complaints are dealt with in a safe environment for all participants – consumers, Participating Service Providers (“PSPs”), and CCTS staff. We believe that by working together, we can create a safe and respectful environment for everyone. This policy reflects our values and our dedication to fostering a safe workplace and customer and provider experience.

We understand that the circumstances of a dispute can be upsetting, frustrating, and cause distress. Our staff are trained to appropriately manage difficult interactions. However, we do not tolerate violence, discrimination, harassment, or other forms of abusive conduct for any reason, at any time. We believe that everyone deserves a working environment where they are treated with dignity and respect, and we will not tolerate any behavior that is harmful, threatening, or offensive to others.

CCTS behaviour

CCTS staff are expected to be respectful of consumers and providers by acting to maintain the good reputation of the CCTS, conducting interactions and investigations with integrity and due care, and treating parties to the complaints with the respect and dignity expected in all business interactions.

Consumer and Participating Service Provider behaviour

In the same manner that CCTS staff are expected to treat others respectfully, it is reasonable for CCTS staff to be treated with respect. Throughout the CCTS’ processes, consumers and representatives of Participating Service Providers are responsible for being reasonably available to discuss the complaint with CCTS staff, providing relevant information to CCTS in a prompt and timely manner, being honest and open in communications with the CCTS, and communicating with CCTS staff in a respectful manner.

Abusive conduct

Abusive conduct includes:

• Threats or attempts to intimidate our employees.
• Degrading, obscene, vulgar, sexually suggestive, or threatening language, or other forms of conduct that seeks to demean, humiliate, or embarrass.
• Discriminatory comments based on age, ancestry, color, race, citizenship, ethnic origin, place of origin, creed (religion), disability, family status, marital status, gender identity, gender expression, sex, and sexual orientation.
• Requests for personal contact or other information unrelated to the complaint, requests for or providing personal photos, or requests to make contact outside work, or contacts through personal social media accounts.
• Undue aggression or hostility.
• Abusive use of our services in the CCTS’ sole discretion, such as filing a high volume of complaints about the same issue, filing complaints under different names, or sending numerous repetitive communications about a complaint that are considered spam.

Responding to abusive conduct

Warning: If we find that an individual is demonstrating abusive conduct towards a CCTS staff member, we will:

• First provide a warning to the individual to advise them that this type of behaviour is unacceptable and contrary to the CCTS’s policy.
• If the abusive behaviour continues, we will warn the individual that we may terminate the call.

If the individual’s behaviour threatens the immediate safety and welfare of our staff member, we may report the matter to law enforcement.

If an individual feels that a member of CCTS staff has behaved in a manner contrary to this policy, they should request to speak to a manager. CCTS’ management team will assess the situation and respond accordingly.

Managing future contact

After experiencing abusive conduct, CCTS will keep a record of the incident and may take action to manage future contact, depending on the situation. This includes:

• Communicating with the individual in writing only, and no longer accepting the individual’s calls.
• Requesting that all contact with the CCTS be through another individual who is an authorized representative.
• Requiring contact to take place with a specific CCTS employee.
• Terminating the active investigation, proceeding with the complaint based on the information already provided, and providing the results of the investigation to the customer in writing.
• Communicating that the CCTS may no longer respond to the individual.
• Closing the complaint entirely.
• Restricting the customer from contacting us.