Cable news network Al Jazeera English has been approved for carriage in Canada.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) released its decision today, approving a request to add the English language service to the list of eligible channels for distribution on digital cable or satellite TV providers in Canada.
One Commissioner wrote a dissenting opinion on the decision.
Toronto's Ethnic Channels Group Limited submitted a request to carry the Qatar-based news channel to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission last February. The CRTC said it received about 2,600 submissions supporting Al Jazeera's entry into Canada, and only 40 opposed.
“There is nothing on the record of the current proceeding that leads the Commission to conclude that AJE would violate Canadian regulations, such as those regarding abusive comment,” the CRTC ruling stated.
As such, the CRTC did not qualify carriage with any requirements to monitor or provide surveillance of the network’s content by carriers, as it did with Al Jazeera's Arabic service in 2004.
Al Jazeera English is broadcast in 100 countries on television and via the Internet, and employs roughly 1,200 journalists, some of them Canadian, including its Managing Director, Tony Burman, a former editor-in-chief at CBC News.
The CRTC decision is published at http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2009/2009-725.htm