Section 26(2) of Canada's Broadcasting Act states that the Governor in Council may direct the CRTC to order licensed broadcasters to carry a particular program in any part of the country, if deemed to be of "urgent importance to Canadians generally". This provision has only been used once, in order to mandate the broadcast of a speech by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien on October 25, 1995 (prior to the Quebec independence referendum) by the licensed television networks. In 2017, Bell Media attempted to request an invocation of the law in order to effectively override a CRTC decision suspending its "simsub" regulations (requiring pay television providers to replace feeds from U.S. terrestrial broadcasters if they carry the same programming as a local terrestrial broadcaster, in order to protect Canadian advertising revenue) for the Super Bowl.
