Canada’s telecom watchdog took in 53,195 complaints in a year, up 79%, and warns tougher cases now take longer while Telus pushes to tighten filing rules.
Canada’s telecom complaints watchdog, the CCTS, received a record 53,195 complaints in its 2025-26 year, up 79 percent. It accepted 41,235 and resolved 87.2 percent of the cases it concluded, but complaints that need conciliation or a full investigation are taking longer than usual.
That matters because the CCTS is the free fallback when your phone, internet or TV provider won’t fix a problem. Telus has asked the CRTC to let the CCTS reject complaints from people who can’t prove they reached a second level of support, and a University of Ottawa law professor is fighting the idea.
CRTC comments close November 13, a hearing follows November 30, and the full CCTS report lands January 13, 2027.
Canadians filed 53,195 complaints about their phone, internet and TV companies in a single year, and the watchdog that handles them says it has never seen demand like it. That total, from the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS), is 79 percent higher than the year before.
If you live in Canada and pay for a cellphone, home internet or TV, this matters for two reasons. First, the CCTS is free and is often the only route left when your provider won’t fix a bill or an outage. Second, the record surge means the cases that need the most help are now moving slowest, just as Telus is asking regulators to make complaints harder to file.
The CCTS counted 53,195 complaints received in its 2025-26 reporting year, which runs from August through July. Not every complaint qualifies: the agency accepted 41,235 of them, 74 percent more than a year earlier.
For scale, the CCTS accepted 23,647 complaints in 2024-25, and that was already a record. Between August 2025 and January 2026, half a reporting year, it accepted 19,157. In other words, complaints almost doubled in one year after already climbing.
The watchdog says it still resolved 87.2 percent of the complaints it concluded. It called the demand for its services unprecedented and said it keeps accepting new cases.
Most complaints settle early, once the CCTS gets the customer and the provider talking. The slow ones are those that move into conciliation (where the CCTS works with both sides toward a deal) or a full investigation (a closer look at the evidence).
Those are the files now taking longer than usual. The commission has warned that waits may stay long while volumes keep rising, so a complicated dispute needs patience.
The detailed breakdown for 2025-26 won’t arrive until the annual report on January 13, 2027. The CCTS’s mid-year report already showed wireless issues up 53 percent, with incorrect charges, disclosure problems, service faults and price increases among the top complaints.
The previous annual report, released in January 2026, gives a sense of the pattern:
Telus also saw the steepest growth of the big three that year, with accepted complaints up 78%.
Right now you need to give your provider a fair chance to fix a problem before going to the CCTS, but you don’t have to prove it. Telus wants that to change. In an October 7 submission to the CRTC, Canada’s telecom regulator, it asked that the CCTS turn away complaints unless customers can show in writing that they reached a second level of support.
Telus says providers should get the first reasonable chance to fix things, and points to a September poll it paid for. In it, 81 percent of 1,100 Canadians agreed carriers deserve that first chance. The same poll found 57 percent didn’t know the CCTS existed, and another 24 percent recognized only its name. Telus has also challenged the CCTS’s legal authority.
Marina Pavlović, a consumer-protection law professor at the University of Ottawa, argues the plan would leave customers at their carrier’s mercy. She says people shouldn’t need to understand a provider’s “organizational chart” to get help, and notes the poll never asked about rejecting complaints without paperwork. With two law students, she has asked the CRTC to require carriers to tell customers about the CCTS as soon as they complain.
It isn’t the only rule fight. Providers have also asked the CRTC to drop some existing consumer protections, including limits on roaming overage charges and rules on phone locking, and to let them claw back sign-up bonuses from customers who leave early. Any of those changes would show up on your bill or in your contract, not just in complaint statistics.
The CRTC’s comment period closes November 13, and a hearing on consumer protection codes is set for November 30 in Gatineau.
The CCTS has set out what helps a case move. In plain terms:
If none of that works and your problem falls within what the CCTS handles, file a complaint. It costs nothing. And given the Telus proposal, it’s smart to ask your provider to escalate your issue and note when it did, even though you don’t need that proof today.
It’s Canada’s independent, free complaints service for phone, internet and TV customers. It steps in when you can’t resolve a problem with your provider.
Simple cases often settle early, but the CCTS says conciliation and investigations are taking longer than usual because of the record volume.
In the last full annual report, Rogers had the largest share at 27%, followed by Telus and Bell. Updated rankings come on January 13, 2027.
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