Tired of burning half your lunch break on hold with your wireless carrier? A new House of Commons e-petition wants Parliament to tell the CRTC to cap telecom hold times at 10 minutes before you reach a human.
Frank Brown of Aurora, Ontario opened e-petition e-7863 for signature on October 27. Conservative MP Kathy Borrelli of Windsor-Tecumseh-Lakeshore is the sponsoring member. Signatures close next month on November 26, 2026.
Those signing the petition want the CRTC to create a clear, measurable customer-service access standard for telecom providers, a maximum 10-minute telephone hold time to reach a person, room for extraordinary exceptions, and meaningful consequences for providers that keep missing the mark. Meeting the standard would mean getting a representative who can start fixing the problem, not another automated menu or a transfer back into the queue.
Based on what we’ve seen online about people venting about Rogers, Telus and Bell wait times, a 10-minute hold time is a big stretch.
Existing consumer-protection rules already cover contracts, billing and cancellation. They do not set a maximum wait for meaningful access to customer service, and the petition argues that rights on paper mean little if you cannot reasonably reach your provider.
Brown previously ran a Change.org drive on the same theme after long waits and dropped calls with his own provider. That campaign drew nearly 1,200 signatures. The Commons version needs 500 validated signatures before it can be certified and presented in the House, after which the government has 45 days to respond.
As of October 29, the e-petition only has 146 validated signatures, so it still has some ways to go.
The push comes as Canada’s telecom complaints watchdog logged a record 53,195 complaints in its latest reporting year, a 79 per cent jump, and the CRTC is heading into a November 30 hearing on consumer protection codes while carriers argue over how the complaints process should work.
Would a 10-minute hold cap change how you deal with your carrier?
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Hold time has always been a problem with ROGERS, I was an outside Cable Tech and when we called in also on hold – bottom line – ROGERS DOES NOT CARE
This assuming the provider supplies the subscriber with access to a live customer service rep in the first place.
Telus, for example, has no ‘Contact Us’ link short of a text bot on its subscriber pages. You can ask to have a real CSR deal with your support request, but even that will end up by being by text – and not always promptly. The automated text thread says it can be up 1 – 2 hours before a response.