CRTC looking into inmate phone call rates in Canada following Ontario case [Video]

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is looking into the rates for phone calls at correctional facilities across the country, spurred by high long-distance charges that families of inmates at Ontario jails had to pay for years.

A proposed class-action lawsuit against the province and Bell, which ran the phone system in the province’s jails from 2013 to 2021, alleges that the charges were exorbitant, with a flat rate of $1 for local calls and about $1 per minute plus a $2.50 connection fee for long-distance calls.

One of the lead plaintiffs in the proposed class action had some monthly phone bills of over $1,000 from the collect calls he received while his son was in solitary confinement, he wrote in an affidavit.

Bell Canada made more than $64 million in gross revenues from such calls over that time period and gave nearly $39 million of that to the province …