OPEN LETTER
To: CRTC Chairperson, Vicky Eatrides
September 18, 2025
The following Open Letter is part of Egale Canada’s
Application Seeking to Remove Fox News from Distribution in Canada
Dear CRTC Chairperson, Vicky Eatrides,
It has been over two years since Egale Canada, the country’s leading organization for 2SLGBTQI people and issues, first called on the CRTC to consider banning Fox News from broadcast in Canada. As the two-year anniversary of the CRTC’s promise to act approaches, it is more paramount than ever that they resume these actions. The first public consultation considered if Fox News should be allowed to continue broadcasting in Canada, and it revealed that Canadians care about this issue. In response to their call for public opinions, more than 7000 letters of intervention were sent to the CRTC, exposing a nationwide public interest.
In the last correspondence Egale received from the CRTC in September 2023, Secretary General, Claude Doucet, admitted that “it has become clear that the current decades-old regulatory approach for overseeing non-Canadian television services requires a review”. Doucet’s letter also promised that a further public consultation would “start in the coming months”.
Now, two years later, the CRTC has taken no action on this publicly relevant conversation, despite moving forward with other consultations. In the meantime, Fox News has continued to spew harmful and abusive content into the homes of Canadians. The promise of change can no longer be delayed, especially change that may protect Canadians from the abusive, misinformed, media emitted by Fox News. This requires immediate and urgent action from the CRTC.
In response to delays in action from the CRTC, Egale Canada has continued to monitor the harmful narratives being produced by Fox News and has been consistently reminded of how its content undermines Section 5 of the Television Broadcasting Regulations. Most egregiously, there are several examples of recent content (June 2023 to present day) that we suggest violate section 5(1)(b), which prevents a licensee from broadcasting “any abusive comment or abusive pictorial representation that, when taken in context, tends to or is likely to expose an individual or a group or class of individuals to hatred or contempt on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age or mental or physical disability.”
⚠️Warning: The following paragraph contains examples of harmful commentary ⚠️
Looking only at recent months, there have been multiple abusive statements made about trans women. Greg Gutfeld called them “autogynephiliacs” and accused them of having “a humiliation fetish”. While speaking about trans women in women’s fencing, Daivid Webb stated “These men are cowards. They are failed men competing against women.” Regular Fox News guest, Riley Gaines, and Harris Faulkner attempted to draw parallels between the crimes of convicted sex offender, Larry Nasser, and the presence of trans women in women’s changerooms, hinting at the widely discredited accusation that the inclusion of trans women subjects cis women to sexual predators. Viewed in context, as the Regulations require, this type of content evokes hateful sentiments about trans people and promotes contempt about their rights. Unfortunately, the harmful content observed during recent periods is not unique.
Read Egale Canada’s Analysis Report: Fox News’ Violations of Canadian Broadcasting Standards for a further breakdown of examples of Fox News’ violations.
Considering these recent examples of heinous Fox News Content, Egale urges the CRTC to progress as soon as possible with the public consultation it promised on September 19, 2023. Hateful content targeting members of 2SLGBTQI communities, particularly members of Two Spirit, trans, nonbinary, and gender diverse communities, produce substantial harms. Given the recently widening divide between Canadian and American policy towards 2SLGBTQI issues, including healthcare, sport, and education, we are concerned that Fox News’ emissions of hateful content could rise, increasing the exposure of 2SLGBTQI communities to harm. It is pertinent that we urgently move forward with this regulatory review to ensure that the regulations protecting vulnerable populations be applied promptly. As it stands, the review Egale Canada requested is open yet sits useless, unable to enact change until its progress is resumed.
The CRTC’s September 2023 letter made clear that Fox New’s future in Canada would be decided after a public consultation. This consultation would produce new regulations, which would then be used to determine if Fox News should remain in Canada or be removed from the list of non-Canadian programming services and stations authorized for distribution. A public revision of regulations aligns with the CRTC’s wider attempts to modernize their broadcasting regulatory framework, so it must imminently go forward.
Egale Canada formally calls on the CRTC to swiftly and meaningfully engage with all relevant stakeholders to facilitate a proper and thorough public consultation on foreign media outlets as part of its efforts to modernize broadcasting regulatory frameworks. These actions are essential to protect Canadians from the hate and misinformation that Fox News has been allowed to spread through Canadian broadcasters. We await your response and the commencement of this deeply important regulatory review.
Sincerely,
Helen Kennedy (she/her)
Executive Director
Egale Canada