Summary

  • Canada’s 28 October Telecom Competition Roadmap repeats ISED’s proposal for a 45-calendar-day tower-siting window and a national online portal.
  • In the detailed draft, the proponent starts the clock by attesting that the required consultation steps are complete; the portal would not retain the consultation exchanges, and a local authority that misses the deadline can lose its chance to stop the tower.

The new number is 45 days. The consequential detail is what starts them.

Canada’s Telecom Competition Roadmap, published by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) on 28 October, says the department is consulting on a tower-siting framework that would replace paper notices with an online portal and cut a municipality’s concurrence period from 120 days to 45. That is the headline version. The May consultation document shows a more exact sequence: the 45-day clock would begin only after the tower proponent attests in the portal that it has met ISED’s requirements and answered reasonable and relevant concerns.

The current procedure uses a different clock. CPC-2-0-03 says ISED expects land-use consultation to finish within 120 days of the proponent’s initial formal contact with the local authority. That period begins once the authority has received the plans it requires; it excludes preliminary discussions. The proposed 45 days would begin later, after public notice, responses and an attestation. The two numbers do not measure the same interval.

The draft makes the deadline consequential. If the land-use authority gives neither concurrence nor non-concurrence within 45 calendar days, ISED would consider the tower approved. If the authority raises a valid concern and it remains unresolved, it must ask ISED to settle the dispute before the same window closes. Miss that step, and the tower would be deemed approved despite the objection. The parties could agree to an extension, but the clock otherwise puts the burden on the local authority to act.

The portal is meant to make applications easier to find. Residents could view the notice package and subscribe to updates; proponents would attest that they considered site sharing and alternatives. The public would have 30 days to send questions, counted from whichever comes later: the portal upload or the required site sign. But the portal would not preserve those exchanges. ISED assigns the proponent sole responsibility for keeping accurate consultation records.

That leaves a peculiar public file: the proposal and the proponent’s attestations are visible, while the questions and answers that precede a deemed approval sit outside the government portal. ISED also proposes that proponents need answer only reasonable or relevant concerns from people living within three times the proposed tower’s height. Anyone could view the file; the response duty would have a smaller radius.

The proposal remains just that. DGSO-001-26 is dated May 2026. ISED’s page says additional comments were posted on 11 September and the reply deadline was extended to 6 October. The new Roadmap still describes the tower framework as under consultation. No final CPC text or portal record specification appears in those official documents.

If adopted, the test will be simple: does the public record show when the clock started, which concerns were answered, what the local authority decided and whether ISED resolved an objection? A portal that stores only the application can publish a process without preserving how that process reached approval.

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