Good morning, Madam Chair, and good morning to the honourable members of the committee.
I am grateful for this opportunity to appear before you today regarding the Rogers and Shaw merger.
My name is Jim Wood, and I'm the mayor of Red Deer County located in the heart of central Alberta. Red Deer County is sparsely populated with a land mass of about two-thirds the size of Prince Edward Island.
My opinion about the merger is that while it may make financial sense for these companies and their investors, it will probably do nothing to improve the gap between urban and rural Internet service, and certainly nothing will improve in Red Deer County.
I've talked to people from Rogers and Shaw prior to this meeting and while their pledge to invest billions of dollars into rural areas will likely expand the Internet access footprint, improved services will only happen as profits allow. Often, companies choose to service cities and towns only and this leaves many rural areas with no broadband service at all. I know that there's no business case where serving fewer than 20,000 people over 4,000 square kilometres returns a profit on investment good enough for any of Canada's telecommunications companies. If there were, my county would already have the same services as Calgary and Edmonton. More competition, not less, is needed to ensure a healthy marketplace.
Government financial assistance to develop shared infrastructure and open networks is absolutely necessary. Legislation will also be needed to ensure that telecommunications companies share assets better, avoid duplication and reduce costs, creating technological equality for all Canadians.
However, my constituents can't wait for this to happen and that's why Red Deer County has invested millions of our own dollars into an open fibre optic network. We've partnered with a service provider that will be profitable without having exclusive control of the market. We are developing better, faster and cheaper services than the ones provided by the incumbents in Alberta's cities.
This do-it-yourself approach is not new. I remember as a boy, my father—a farmer—climbing poles and stringing wires so that our farm could get basic phone services.
Times have changed and our businesses now must compete in a global marketplace, but sadly, the system is broken and those few companies in Canada's telecommunications industry have no reason to change it. Unfortunately, much of rural Canada has poorer Internet and cellphone service than many third world countries. Merger or no merger, the impact on my citizens will likely be the same.
Thank you.