Thank you for inviting me to be here today.
When last we spoke, the Rogers network had gone dark from coast to coast, disrupting the lives of families across the country and causing business to grind to a halt. The outage should have served as a wake-up call that bigger is not always better, especially when it comes to the essential services that we all rely on in our daily lives.
This committee got it right when it took the view that the merger should not be permitted to proceed, but unelected regulators have moved the deal forward anyway. It is now up to the minister to decide. While it's widely expected that he will give approval, doing so, in my opinion, would be a mistake.
This disconnect has me wondering: What is our priority in this country? Is it to promote competition, or are we more concerned with catering to big business and paying deference to the corporate effort to control crucial markets?
I'd like to offer three general thoughts on these questions. First, I'd like to believe that our priority is competition, but actions speak louder than words. I've been studying telecommunication for 10 years now, through two degrees, and I'm getting tired of hearing nice words being used to paper over harmful, wrong decisions. From the consumer's perspective, Canada's telecom markets were in a woeful state when I began my studies. As CBC's Marketplace recently reported, we continue to pay among the highest prices for service in the developed world.
The merging parties, each of them controlled by a family of billionaires, are in a rush to get the merger approved, because they stand to benefit tremendously. I think we all know that consumers, working people and small businesses will be on the hook once this deal goes through.
The tribunal has approved the merger, but its decision was not exactly a ringing endorsement. That's because the bar is set so low that the companies had only to prove that price increases caused by this merger would not be substantial. The tribunal can accept that mobile prices will increase because of the deal, approve it anyway and call it a win for competition. I've said it before and I'll say it again: You can put lipstick on a pig, but you can't make it sing.
The tribunal's decree was based on arcane rules and opaque information presented by competing experts, but if you leave aside all the assumptions, abstractions and redactions and you look around the world, you see that people are paying a fraction of the price for mobile connectivity elsewhere in comparison with what we pay here. We need to aim higher and be more ambitious. We can do better than simply preserve the status quo—if you even accept that this is what this merger will do.
Second, this merger has been set on a collision course with the CRTC and with the future of competition more broadly in telecommunications. Beyond the lacklustre future facing mobile customers, there are grave concerns with the tribunal's decision to approve this merger. Consider that in order to get the deal approved, Rogers convinced the tribunal to accept a series of very generous arrangements it set up that ostensibly will help Videotron expand into wireless and home Internet markets in the rest of Canada. I understand that Rogers wants to get bigger, and that Videotron wants to seize this opportunity to expand. These telecom giants are simply doing what they do, but let's not pretend that they're generous to anyone but their shareholders and executives. Rogers' offer of very generous terms for network access is, in short, simply too good to be true.
For starters, what are we to make of a situation in which a dominant firm chooses who its rivals will be and offers them special favours? The fact is that dominant telecom companies like Rogers, Bell and Telus have a long history of using complex agreements like these to their advantage. They dangle these offers in front of regulators and competitors because they're too good to refuse, but the reality is that they use them to control their competitors, not to give them a boost.
By approving these agreements, the tribunal has created a serious conflict. That is because an agreement such as this one, whereby a dominant provider gives special treatment to itself or others, may very well be illegal under the Telecommunications Act. In fact, a complaint has already been filed at the CRTC that credibly alleges that this agreement will undermine competition for home broadband services across the country. I do not believe Parliament could have intended for a deal approved under one act to conflict with the other in this case, but in the meantime the CRTC will be dealing with the mess as this offending merger draws closer to completion.
My last message is that this can all be stopped before it's too late. I continue to believe that this merger will be harmful, but Rogers, Shaw and Videotron have successfully navigated it past the first two of the three barriers it has faced. In my view, the regulators have gotten it wrong, but where they failed, the minister still has a chance to get it right. His role and responsibilities go far beyond simply rubber-stamping corporate deals and selling them as a win to the public. He has broad powers to act in the public interest, powers that allow for a much broader consideration of the public good than the regulators' narrow frameworks permit them.
The minister still has a chance to do what he should have done when the merger was announced, and stop it in its tracks. He has a chance to show these corporations that they cannot run roughshod over the Canadian public and the institutions intended to ensure that our society flourishes.
The path forward for the minister is simple. Instead of giving these companies what they want, he should force them to compete.
Thank you.