The past few years have been extraordinarily busy for the CRTC, with the regulator overhauling the Canadian broadcast system through its Let’s Talk TV hearing and its current examination of the telecommunication and digital environment.

Now the CRTC has unveiled its three-year plan, which will take the regulator through to 2019.

The plan shows a continued commitment to the issues highlighted by the commission through the Let’s Talk TV process. Of particular importance to broadcasters and advertisers is the CRTC’s continued development of a set-top box measurement system in Canada, English and French-language channel licence renewals, decisions around local TV and the  continued enforcement of anti-spam laws.

A set-top box measurement system will continue to be developed with the CRTC and an industry working group this year. The system is set to be implemented in 2017 and monitored through 2019.

In May the CRTC will host a two-day Discoverability Summit, the next step in its exploration of solutions into how people discover content both online and off. The CRTC hosted a set of two pre-summit events earlier this year, with experts discussing the opportunities and the challenges facing content creators in a changing content landscape.

The CRTC will make a decision on how it will be revising criteria for Canadian independent production funds before the end of 2017. Those revisions are aimed at contributing to a sector that is better able to create high-quality content for Canadians and the global market. The CRTC will monitor compliance with the revised criteria through 2019.

The CRTC will begin processing applications to remove genre protections from the licences of programming services this year, continuing the process through 2019.

Renewals for the licences of English and French-language TV channels are also planned for 2016-2017, with those decisions being monitored through 2019.

On the content regulation side, the CRTC will participate in a working group with the Canada Media Fund, Telefilm and Rogers Telefund to assist with launching pilot projects in the area of Canadian content certification. The regulator will then process certification requests from the production sector around the pilot projects through 2019.

Community and local TV will be the focus of a revised policy to ensure that appropriate policies and regulations are in place relating to programming that’s locally relevant and reflects the surrounding community in an accessible way. The renewed framework will then be monitored through 2019.

The CRTC will issue a notice of consultation to review the Ethnic Radio Policy in 2016-2017, with part of the analysis responding to the changing demographic makeup of multicultural communities in Canada. A similar analysis of the Indigenous Radio Policy is planned for before 2017.

Additional topics on the docket for the CRTC through 2019 include reviews on the current management of internet traffic, a conclusion of its review of basic telecommunications services and the regulator conducting research on privacy issues in the new digital environment.