TORONTO — Until the end of August 2025, one could tune to 106.5 MHz in Canada’s largest market and hear First Peoples Radio-licensed Class B1 CFPT-FM, branded as “ELMNT FM.” It offered “Today’s Indigenous Beat” to audiences across the GTA. On September 1, due to revenue and ratings challenges, CFPT signed off the air.
Nevertheless, the CRTC has declared Toronto, and Ottawa, where a sibling also met its demise, deserve more indigenous voices on the radio dial.
The Commission on Wednesday formally issued a call for applications for FM radio stations to serve the Indigenous communities of Ottawa-Gatineau and Toronto.
“In the Commission’s view, there is a need and a demand for radio stations to serve the needs and interests of those communities,” the CRTC claims.
Some may question the “demand” the Canadian equivalent of the FCC asserts. On Oct. 24, 2018, CFPT debuted with a tower atop the First Canadian Place office tower in downtown Toronto. The approval of CFPT’s Class B1 signal was controversial, as it used a frequency also used by Townsquare Media’s top-rated Country WYRK-FM in Buffalo, a Class B facility. Engineers for CFPT successfully mitigated interference concerns for listeners in Niagara County communities such as Lewiston, N.Y., signing it on the air as a voice of native Canadians. Concurrently, CFPO-FM 95.7 signed on the air as a Class C1 facility targeting First Nations audiences in the Nation’s Capital.
The mission of First Peoples Radio was to “fill the gap” for First Nations audiences who didn’t hear themselves represented on Canadian FMs that already are required to devote 25% of their recorded music to Canadian artists, per “CanCon” rules. Among these acts is Aysanabee, who has emerged as a popular mainstream Alternative Rock act and can be heard on stations across Canada.
Yet, First Peoples Radio did not operate in the cities that are largely considered to be the biggest population centres in Canada — Winnipeg, Edmonton, Vancouver, Calgary and Saskatoon. Some believed the licensee benefited from the government of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s desire to repair ties to First Nations leaders with Ottawa, rather than serve a true void in Toronto and Ottawa.
While those points are debatable, the COVID-19 pandemic of six years ago brought extreme financial difficulties for First People’s Radio. They persisted across five subsequent years of operation, making the subsidiary of the Dadan Sivunivut family fiscally unsound even as Corus Radio provided space at no cost to the operator in both Ottawa and Toronto. That led First Peoples Radio to finally cease operations of its two stations. In October 2025, the CRTC cancelled each station’s license.
Rather than opening up each frequency to any potential operator, the CRTC is opting to give another operator a second try with a First Nations-focused FMs in Ontario’s two largest markets.
“It is the Commission’s preliminary view that these markets should be served by radio stations operated by and for Indigenous peoples,” the CRTC said, even as it illustrated the failure of prior operators in serving First Nations listeners.
There has been an over 20-year history of Indigenous broadcasting in Ottawa and Toronto. Aboriginal Voices Radio Inc. operated Indigenous radio stations in these cities from 2000 to July 2015; the former CKAV-FM in Toronto was its broadcast home. The CRTC stripped that operator of its licenses due to a lengthy history of rule non-compliance. First Peoples Radio Inc. emerged in 2017 as a successor to serving the First Nations audiences.
“As such, as of late 2025, there have been no Indigenous-led radio stations dedicated to the Indigenous communities” in Ottawa and Toronto, the CRTC said. “In the Commission’s view, there continues to be a need and a demand for radio stations in Ottawa and Toronto to serve the needs and interests of Indigenous communities in and around those cities.”
To address the absence of Indigenous radio stations in Ottawa and Toronto, the Commission calls for applications for new FM radio stations to serve their Indigenous communities. All interested persons must submit applications to the Commission by no later than June 18. “It is the Commission’s preliminary view that only one station should be licensed in each of the Ottawa and Toronto markets to serve their Indigenous communities, to help ensure that each station has the greatest opportunity for viability.”
