Fiona Gilfillan

Fiona Gilfillan was appointed Executive Director of Telecommunications in November 2021. Her extensive and broad experience in the Telecommunications field combined with her strategic planning and leadership skills contribute to ensuring that Canadians have access to a world-class communications system by leading most of the CRTC’s telecommunications regulatory activities.

In 1993, she began her public service career with the CRTC as a rates project officer.

From 1996 to 2002, she gained management, planning and leadership experience working with various private telecommunications companies including Call-Net Enterprises Inc. and AT&T Canada Corp.

Ms Gilfillan returned to the CRTC from 2002 to 2007 as Director General, Industry Analysis, Policy and Consumer Affairs. Among her many accomplishments and contributions, she was instrumental in attracting, hiring and retaining new graduates at the CRTC. She led key telecom policy files including the establishment and implementation of the National Do Not Call List, forbearance from regulating the incumbent telecommunications providers, price cap regulation, and a policy framework for the regulation of voice-over-internet protocol (VoIP).

She then joined Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, where she led spectrum operations, spectrum auctions and policy. Most recently, from 2017 to 2021, Fiona was the Assistant Deputy Minister of the Spectrum Telecom Sector, where she was responsible for, among other things, spectrum management, the Communications Research Centre, and standards and certification of telecommunications equipment in the spectrum and telecommunications sector.

Ms Gilfillan has a Master’s in Business Administration, emphasis in strategic planning, York University and a Bachelor of Mathematics, University of Waterloo.