I know that sometimes you wish you had the control of my mute button, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, everyone, for coming to the meeting while we're on a constituency session.
I too would like to begin by acknowledging, if I could, Ed Broadbent's passing today. I was a young staffer, as many of you know, in the Mulroney days when Mr. Broadbent was the leader of the NDP. He was a remarkable leader for that party and a great parliamentarian who represented the people of Oshawa well in his many years in Parliament. I'd just like to acknowledge that.
Also, on a happier note, I acknowledge that MP Turnbull signed in today with his new addition. We haven't had a chance to meet since you had your second child. Congratulations, Ryan. We're all very happy for you.
The letter that was sent in calling for this meeting—for those who are watching it's an emergency meeting that has to be called within five days of five MPs signing a letter—discusses whether or not we should have a particular study, an urgent study, on an issue that has come up.
This committee, as we know, is very busy with Bill C-27 and is still awaiting the next level of scrutiny of the Stellantis contracts. It was a bit surprising, I think, for most of us to see. I think it was announced on January 3, and it was in most of the media on January 4 of this new 2024 year. It was a kind of shocking way to greet the year that the most expensive cellphone provider in the world, Rogers, announced that apparently they're not making enough money and that cellphone packages are going up seven to nine dollars.
As my colleague MP Ferreri said, this is a very ubiquitous thing. It is probably the thing that most Canadians share in common: 83% of Canadians, by the last time I looked, have a cellphone. That's more people than own a house. More than anything else, probably, Canadians have a cellphone, and for the reasons that MP Ferreri outlined. It's our communication lifeline, our phone lifeline and our connection to the world through the Internet. It's our emergency lifeline, as she outlined in that difficult situation of her constituent.
This is a cellphone price increase when, a year ago almost to the day, the big three—Shaw, Rogers and Quebecor—were before this committee saying that we needed to have the sale of the Shaw assets and that it would increase competition in this country and reduce prices for Canadians. We know that a month after the Freedom sale was done in April 2023, just in that one month, before the ink had even dried on the Liberal government's approval of Quebecor buying Freedom Mobile and Rogers buying the Shaw assets—and those two transactions removed two cellphone competitors from the Canadian market—Quebecor also put up Freedom's prices, even though they said they would not do that. They waited only a month to do that.
Like I said, why is that important? Well, 83% of us have a cellphone and we're in the middle of this cost of living crisis. We know that since 2016 Statistics Canada has reported that Canadians are paying almost 20%—I know it feels like more to most people—more per household out of their income than they were prior to 2016 for cellphone services. International studies, many of them that we know, show prices for cellphone services in the U.S., Australia and other countries are actually declining while ours are going up. Cansumer reported in August of 2023 that Canadians pay 20% more than Americans and 170% more than Australians for the average cellphone package.
We hear the excuses. We heard before this committee from big telcos that the size of Canada is the reason. The size of the country with its low population is the reason we pay more. Rogers, Bell and Telus, though, are the most expensive cellphone providers in the world. I mentioned at the time a year ago—and I'll say it again—that their operating profits are quite high. Their gross operating profits are 62% to 65%. That's twice as high as the profits of the major carriers of cellphone and mobile services in the United States and Australia.
How bad is it? In Canada, the average price per gigabyte of data on your cellphone is $5.37. In a country larger than Canada—because we hear that excuse all the time about the size of Canada—in Russia, not that they're in vogue these days, they now pay only 25¢ U.S. per gigabyte. Australia has about the same density and land area as Canada. They have more competition, and they pay only 44¢ a gigabyte for data on their phones, while we're paying over five dollars and our cellphone providers are making twice the level of gross profit.
It's clear that what we have here is a problem with competition. Those who have this protected status take us, consumers, and, quite frankly, the federal government for granted. It's the federal government that protects Bell, Telus, Rogers and Quebecor, this oligopoly, because they use airwaves that taxpayers pay them for. It's that protection that allows them to have this double-the-average operating profit and be the massively most expensive cellphone providers in the world.
Last year the Liberal government approved the sale of Shaw's assets to Rogers and Quebecor, removing two of the competitors in the market. The Liberals claimed at the time that the companies would respect the fact that prices would still go down, even though there would be fewer competitors. It has never actually happened in any competitive market that you have reduced competitors and prices go down. Now Rogers and Quebecor are thumbing their noses at this Liberal government by raising prices.
The Liberal Minister of Industry, in meetings, has had tough talks, we hear. We've heard it in the House that there have been tough talks on groceries and on cellphones, but the prices still go up. What did he say about cellphones? He said, “I'm watching closely”, as MP Ferreri outlined. Watching closely doesn't help people pay the bills when the Liberals promised that the prices would go down, but they're actually going up.
Telus and Bell are refusing to answer the media's questions, in response to Rogers' increase, about what they plan to do. If they weren't planning to increase prices, we know that they would say, “We're not planning to increase prices,” to the media. I guess they must be planning increases as well, or they would come clean on that in public.
Because the Liberal Minister of Industry, who helps oversee this cost of living crisis that we have.... These cellphone companies came before this committee a year ago, and before the Competition Bureau, claiming they would reduce prices if the Freedom sale went through. They claimed that, but they're doing the opposite now by increasing the cost to Canadians. That's why this committee needs to have urgent hearings with these players as to why they said a year ago we should trust them and prices would go down, but now they've done the opposite.
Canadians want this gouging to stop. It has been going on for too long. Not a single Canadian I know who doesn't work for Bell, Telus or Rogers thinks that prices have gone down. I suspect the people who work for them think that, but they may be the only ones.
Mr. Chair, I think the clerk has a copy of the study motion that I would like to propose. If she could circulate it, I'll just read it out for the committee members while it's being circulated. I move:
That, in relation to recent reports that Rogers will increase customer cell phone bills following a pledge by Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri that “prices are going to come down” as part of the $26 billion Rogers-Shaw merger approved by the Liberal Minister of Innovation, Science, and Industry, after committee experts and the Competition Commissioner warned that the deal would lead to higher prices for consumers—
I'll interrupt myself in the middle of it. This committee, by the way, recommended unanimously not to approve that deal, but the government went ahead anyway.
I'll continue:
—the committee therefore agree to be immediately recalled to undertake a study of up to four meetings, of at least two hours per meeting, to study the impact of the Liberal-approved merger and that these meetings begin at the earliest opportunity and conclude by Friday January 26, in order for the committee to return to its regular agenda when Parliament resumes, and that the committee invite the following witnesses to appear before the committee:
(a) François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, and Simon Kennedy, Deputy Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada;
(b) Tony Staffieri, CEO and President of Rogers; Mirko Bibic, President and CEO of BCE; Darren Entwistle, President and CEO of Telus; and Pierre Karl Péladeau, President and CEO of Quebecor Media;
(c) Navdeep Bains, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer for Rogers Communication, and former Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry;
(d) Matthew Boswell, Commissioner of Competition; and
(e) all other witnesses deemed relevant by the committee;
and, that the committee request that the department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development provide a progress report on Roger’s five legally binding investment commitments to improve connectivity over the next five years; and, subject to the approval of the recognized party’s whips, and the availability of meeting slots from the House of Commons, the committee hold additional meetings and/or extend committee meetings beyond an hour on each allotted day for each meeting on this matter.
We have a full agenda. I've suggested that we try to do these meetings before the 26th. I know that's maybe a challenge, given that's it's not next week but the week after. I understand that we all have, at various times during the week, the presession caucus gatherings. As always when we all propose and study motions here, we're open to improvements and suggestions on ways fellow committee members think we might be able to get this done within the agenda timing and with the many pressures that all of us have with various meetings.
With that, Mr. Chair, I'll leave it there for now.