Saul wrote:

You haven't offered any concrete reasoning here. It's all subjective - your opinion. How do you define success, in this particular instance? Are you entirely certain it will need government grants? And even if so, why is that so wrong - you do realize governments spend money on everything from oil and gas to sports? And what do you mean by gain - how do you define that? Maybe to the recovery of Indigenous people and culture, this could be substantial and even cornerstone. Do remember that Indigenous culture has strong oral roots - so radio would be a natural. And, yes, radio is evolving. 106.5, or 1010 or 99.9 for that matter, are mere content delivery trucks. A strong station planning and operations team would need to plan for the future. The proverbial seven generations. If this is CRTC or government virtue signaling, I'd rather that than breaking up families and clans and punishing and torturing kids for speaking their ancestral language.

No evidence? Just my opinion? Not even close. There have now been four attempts at this in Toronto and Ottawa, and all of them have failed by their own admission. even with government support and the support of other private broadcasters they still had no quantifiable listeners and lost vast amounts of money. Nobody missed them when they went off the air, not even a peep. The bare minimum definition of success is to sustain oneself; but we must also ask if this is the best use of the last FM frequency available in both markets? Absolutely not. It is the definition of insanity to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.

Yes I am entirely certain it will require government grants, Elmnt asked for $2 million. While our governments may spend a lot more on other matters, would you rather they light $2,000,000 of your hard earned tax dollars on fire every year, or spend it on something else? Even if you're hellbent on helping out the near nonexistent indigenous population in Toronto, wouldn't that money be better spent on actual services they'll use? 50,000 people in a market of 5 mill is peanuts. All 50,000 of them would have to listen to this radio station each week for this station to dream of breaking even. The goal of radio is to reach as many people as possible, not as few as possible. Why don't we run a station targeting expat Liechtensteiners while we're at it?

The call was issued today.  CRTC staff blame the failure of First People’s Radio - Toronto and Ottawa on Covid-19. Absurd.  The stations failed because there was no sustainable business plan.  None.   No significant listening audience and a format that could not compete with well funded, well established mainstream radio stations.  Plain and simple.   The CRTC will repeat the mistake again and again, and again.   I’m not suggesting that there isn’t a need for aboriginal programming….but it will never be viable as a commercial operation in Toronto.  Not in my lifetime.   And, let us not forget that APTN would not exist were it not for a mandated monthly "9(1)(h) tax on every cable tv viewer.  It is not a viable television operation.

Last edited by tvguy (February 18, 2026 12:10 pm)

I also found this quote rather odd.

"...while the frequencies 95.7 MHz in Ottawa and 106.5 MHz in Toronto are now vacant following the revocation of the licences for FPR’s former stations, any applicant that responds to this call for applications may propose the use of an alternative available frequency."

I don't know about Ottawa, but what possible "alternative frequency" in Toronto are they referring to? Is there one? 103.9, which is impossible to hear in most parts of the city given it is necessarily low power due to adjacent stations? What other dial position could they possibly suggest?
 

Aytononline wrote:

The First Nation community in Toronto and Ottawa should follow the business model of Cabin Radio in Yellowknife. Build an online following, complete with audio shows, advertising, paid staff and making a profit. When you get more listeners then some legacy radio stations, go to the CRTC and make your case for a radio station. But as Cabin Radio found out, it will still be hard to get the CRTC to understand. This way even if the CRTC says no, they are still serving the community and meeting a need OTA stations are not able to do.

Except I don't think the CRTC will say no. They seem to desperately want this to happen, regardless of practicality. I'm all for such a station - but only if it can sustain itself. We don't need to be going through this again five or six years from now. 

Saul wrote:

If anyone interested in launching such a station is reading this, I'm interested in helping make this it happen and succeed. I don't see a role for myself making actual decisions, and I don't want a paid position of any kind, because I am not Indigenous. But I have journalism and community radio experience, was on the board of directors for one station for a few years, and see perhaps helping out with strategy, bridge-building, and such.

Thank you so much for wasting our tax dollars for an audience of ten people who don't know how to download a podcast or stream a radio station, it is truly appreciated......

torontostan wrote:

Thank you so much for wasting our tax dollars for an audience of ten people who don't know how to download a podcast or stream a radio station, it is truly appreciated......

You're welcome. I don't need an incentive but thank you for trying.

torontostan wrote:

Hansa wrote:

What tax dollars?

This entire CRTC process will waste of hundreds of thousands of dollars with well over a dozen public servants wasting hours sifting through applications, translating, conversing, and holdings hearings, along with whatever government grants or loans an Indigenous station would require to be solvent........ We've reached peak virtue signalling in this country, and it's time for a reality check & course correction 

Given that Indigenous people have had their culture forcibly ripped from them as a matter of government policy for so many years, it seems reasonable - given current (though weak IMO) efforts towards reconciliation - that there's some mild acknowledgement of this mistreatment and some effort to provide them with some infrastructure to bring their culture back in some form. You might not want your precious tax dollars used to fund the meagre few hours bureaucrats will spend working to help pave the way, legally, for a couple of radio stations to happen, but hopefully kinder and smarter forces will prevail.

I do think this kind of effort needs to be handled thoughtfully. Commercial for-profit doesn't seem a good model here; better community-non-profit. And thinking of the stations as infrastructure working alongside other infrastructure, as I've outlined earlier in this thread. It'll take a strong team with diverse strengths and an ability to collaborate to pull this off, not a single person with a grand idea and an ego - though it might need someone with vision and a healthy ego to serve as the spark plug.
 

Saul wrote:

Given that Indigenous people have had their culture forcibly ripped from them as a matter of government policy for so many years, it seems reasonable - given current (though weak IMO) efforts towards reconciliation - that there's some mild acknowledgement of this mistreatment and some effort to provide them with some infrastructure to bring their culture back in some form. You might not want your precious tax dollars used to fund the meagre few hours bureaucrats will spend working to help pave the way, legally, for a couple of radio stations to happen, but hopefully kinder and smarter forces will prevail.

I do think this kind of effort needs to be handled thoughtfully. Commercial for-profit doesn't seem a good model here; better community-non-profit. And thinking of the stations as infrastructure working alongside other infrastructure, as I've outlined earlier in this thread. It'll take a strong team with diverse strengths and an ability to collaborate to pull this off, not a single person with a grand idea and an ego - though it might need someone with vision and a healthy ego to serve as the spark plug.
 

So in other words, virtue signalling..... because this will amount to zero listeners, and is not in the best interest of the vast majority of the population to which the CRTC should be most concerned about when it comes to BROADcasting. 

It will have zero impact on reconciliation. The "my ancestors were here a long time ago so subsidize my lifestyle" rigmarole is getting to be nauseating..... very few nations put up with this. Should we give the royal family their own channel? They once ruled the land too!

Saul wrote:

torontostan wrote:

Should we give the royal family their own channel? They once ruled the land too!

You're getting silly...

I would bet a royal family channel would have far more listeners than throat singing on 106.5 followed by the "how to evade taxes because your great-grandfather never moved" show!

My great-grandfather who immigrated from England to Canada held title to his house, so it wasn’t hard to move. He could sell his house and use the equity to set up his next house.

The Indian Act doesn’t allow private land title on reserves, so someone else’s great-grandfather who was a Status Indian on reserve at that time couldn’t sell his house. He could only give it back to the band and leave with approximately nothing. Tied his hands against moving.

Last edited by Jonathan W (February 20, 2026 3:24 pm)

Radiowiz wrote:

Here is what a possible station would most likely sound like:  https://www.canadaradiostations.com/973-ckon

CKON - as close as calls can come to Mohawk for Hello, Shé:kon - has been around for quite some time. Back in the early 80s, while writing an academic paper delineating different kinds of unlicensed broadcasting (generally speaking, pirates versus more politically overt clandestine stations, plus other phenomena such as Numbers), I went down there to record some audio. It's been a good many years, and memory plays tricks, but I recall it starting out with the view that a license from the Canadian government was simply not needed. It just went on-air. Though it did have those calls. That's where my memory fails. Anyhow, well after the fact, to my knowledge, Industry Canada may have simply quietly recognized the station - it's never been challenged. I don't know the situation too precisely. Oddly, it's not listed in the WTFDA (DX club) database, which I help edit (I look after Canada). I'll have to look into that and discuss criteria with my database colleagues, with a view to adding it.

I can hear it at my north Kawarthas site whenever there's good tropo propagation to the Cornwall area. It's got good power. I believe in the order of tens of thousands of watts.

It's a decent station for what it's doing - serving a fixed and fairly sizeable community (Akwesasne, which straddles Ontario, Quebec and NY State). Toronto and Ottawa stations might do well to sound like CKON some of the time, but it'd be awesome if they could be even more than that. Perhaps all or many of the Indigenous stations across Canada could be thought of as a loose network, or perhaps better as a cooperative where resources and talent are shared. There was a comment earlier about CBC being mandated with an Indigenous network. I don't completely agree, but it's still a good thought. In my view, at least, it's probably best kept independent and truly in Indigenous hands. But collaboration of some kind and at some point might be highly worthwhile.