B.C.’s consumer watchdog is locked in a court battle with Telus after accusing the telecommunications giant of stonewalling an inspector trying to determine if a mistaken $1,435.65 cancellation fee was part of a systemic issue.
According to documents obtained by CBC News, Consumer Protection B.C. (CPBC) claimed Telus provided misleading information in response to a request for copies of complaints Telus first insisted did not exist — only to later admit the files were too numerous to sift through.
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Last month, Telus appealed to B.C. Supreme Court for a judicial review of an order demanding more than $40,000 in fines and legal fees along with an improvement in how the company responds to regulatory requests and identifies records.
The penalty followed more than a year of back-and-forth between CPBC and both internal and external lawyers for Telus; they accused an agency inspector of overstepping his mandate by issuing what the company considered “illegal” orders for a “fishing expedition.”
CBC News obtained records of the investigation through a freedom of information request to the provincial regulator. The documents detail an underlying conflict over the extent of the regulator’s right to demand corporate accountability on behalf of frustrated citizens.
“Telecommunications is comprehensively regulated by the federal government,” Telus lawyer Julia Won wrote in an email to inspector Jason McColl.
“It is not a good use of public or private resources to engage in investigations of matters already addressed in detail by an industry-specific regulatory regime that also includes investigation and enforcement powers.”
The case highlights a complaint-resolution landscape that can be confusing for customers of telecommunication companies.
The federal Commission for Complaints for Telecom-Television Services resolves service complaints, but CPBC’s mandate includes investigations into alleged violations of B.C.’s Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act (BPCPA) — including contract breaches.
Under those terms, McColl claimed CPBC had a right to initiate an investigation into Telus in January 2025 after receiving a complaint from a customer who claimed she had cancelled a sales contract “but that it was not cancelled.”
“It is our understanding that Telus is headquartered in British Columbia, as evidenced in Telus contracts,” McColl wrote.
“If this is correct, it means that all Telus contracts (not only the ones with British Columbia based customers) must be in compliance with the BCPCA, notwithstanding that a consumer to a contract may be situated outside of British Columbia.”
The records obtained by CBC News do not include a copy of the complaint itself, but at one point McColl asked about a timeframe that saw the woman receive a cancellation notice on Christmas Eve of 2024 along with a “fee of $1,435.65 for said cancellation.”
“Can you please provide an explanation for why this fee occurred?” McColl asked.
Telus responded to McColl’s initial query within weeks, insisting the issue was an isolated incident, cancelling the fee and blaming “human error or misunderstanding by an agent” who continued charging for a service they had been asked to cancel.
But instead of wrapping up his probe, McColl used the complaint as a springboard to open a new inspection.
“We noticed some potential issues of non-compliance with contract provisions under the Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act,” he told Won.
“We appreciate your position that there is no systemic issue and our inspection will look to confirm this.”
As part of the new investigation, McColl issued an order requiring Telus to disclose copies of all records relating to consumer requests to cancel contracts because they did not meet the terms of the consumer protection legislation.
He also asked for records of “penalty payments demanded and/or collected … from a consumer seeking to cancel a contract.”
Won insisted that Telus did not capture data or make records based on a consumer’s request to cancel a contract because it didn’t meet the terms of the BCPCA or because goods or services were not supplied within a specific time period.
“We do not have records that respond to your request,” Won wrote.
“To be clear, we do not impose ‘penalties’ on consumers. [Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission] regulations do not allow penalties, but do permit an ‘early cancellation fee’ under specific circumstances.”
According to the email exchanges, McColl later tested those claims by providing Telus details of a complaint from a customer in Coquitlam, B.C., which he claimed fit the exact parameters of the inspection order.
He then demanded to know why the complaint wasn’t located through the company’s own searches.
In an email, Won accused McColl of testing Telus and said the company had “deep concerns about the nature of these inquiries.”
“Nothing in the Act contemplates that an inspector may run tests of this nature,” she wrote.
“We reiterate our request that we focus on actual consumer issues and complaints. If consumers are bringing complaints to your office, we want to know about them … However opaque general fishing expeditions do not allow for those discussions.”
In the aftermath of that exchange, an external lawyer for Telus wrote an email to McColl blaming technical issues relating to “the capacity and scope of electronic searches” for the lack of records.
“As you can appreciate, in a company with millions of customers, there are a vast number of customer communications. TELUS applied certain filters to identify the files most likely to contain responsive communications,” the email reads.
“There are thousands of complaint files over the time period referred to in your demand for information. [There are] far too many records to review manually to assess whether customers have made specific allegations about compliance with the BPCPA.”
Telus offered to manually search 200 customer files and provide records responding to the request, but said even that effort would “require multiple employees to be fully dedicated to the review for several weeks.”
McColl’s final report to the director of Consumer Protection B.C. claimed the lawyer’s email directly contradicted the company’s “earlier categorical representations that no such responsive records existed.”
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“If potentially thousands of consumer files may contain potentially responsive material, then [Telus’s] absolute statements of non-existence are inconsistent with any reasonable or diligent search,” the report says.
“Difficulty retrieving records is not the same as the absence of records. By repeatedly stating that its searches revealed zero responsive items and asserting that no such records existed, [Telus] supplied information that was demonstrably false or misleading.”
Consumer Protection B.C. issued a decision in June finding Telus had supplied misleading information and had failed to produce records.
The ruling came with a demand for $19,000 in fines and $22,000 to cover the costs of McColl’s inspection.
The company was also ordered to “develop, revise and implement written policies and procedures governing its response to inspection orders and inquiries” from the regulator.
The fines and order for compliance are in limbo pending the outcome of the Supreme Court challenge in which Telus accuses Consumer Protection B.C. of making unlawful and unreasonably broad demands for information.In a statement, Telus said the company “fundamentally disagrees with the findings of Consumer Protection B.C., and we look forward to presenting our arguments in court.”
Consumer Protection B.C. told CBC News the agency would not comment while the case is before the courts.
