The CRTC’s upcoming hearings into CTVglobemedia’s purchase of CHUM are a rushed charade, says the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, which represents 25,000 media workers across Canada.

‘Trying to squeeze a brief review in before major deals get signed is a regulatory shell game,’ Peter Murdoch, VP media of CEP, tells Playback Daily. ‘The government should get out on the road and hear what people have to say about this. This is about media concentration, and that’s critically important to our cultural sovereignty.’

On Friday, the federal Competition Bureau approved CTVglobemedia’s $1.4-billion purchase of CHUM. Last week, the CRTC announced it will hold public hearings on the matter beginning April 30, a process that will be presided over by new CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein, who headed the Competition Bureau from 1997 to 2003.

The deadline for written submissions to the process is April 5, which doesn’t give the interested parties enough time to put together their cases, says Murdoch. ‘These are complicated issues. I don’t understand the rush. The CRTC needs to give Canadians a real opportunity to run the race on this one.’

Murdoch isn’t the only party concerned. On Monday, the advocacy group Canadian Conference of the Arts sent a letter to Heritage Minister Bev Oda requesting to prolong the CTVglobemedia hearings ‘to ensure an honest, transparent and responsible public discussion within the CRTC process.’

But Friends of Canadian Broadcasting’s Ian Morrison believes the CRTC is following due process. ‘I’ve watched the CRTC for a couple of decades and this is pretty standard procedure,’ he says. ‘It’s rare to give more than five weeks or so to comment.’