Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to talk about this issue. I also want to thank Senator Patterson for putting forth the legislation, which we will hopefully move to the industry committee.
It is really important to understand a couple of things about the spectrum auction. I know that, when we talk about these things, people's eyes usually glass over; they do not see this as something that connects to them and their family on a regular basis. However, it is at the root of the problem in terms of the reason we have high prices. I say that because, from Jean Chrétien to Paul Martin, Stephen Harper and our current Prime Minister, the philosophy has been to grab the cash from these companies and then have no terms and conditions related to pricing, consumer rights or any of those things. The profits these companies have and the way they treat the general public would make a robber baron blush.
It is important for the public to understand this: We control all this. We always have. That is not in dispute. It is something that is not going to change. We issue out the public airwaves. The public space above us, which we own, is a series of different products in terms of speed and the way it can be accessed by companies, but we control it 100%.
There has been $21 billion that has come in to the government coffers under Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin, Stephen Harper and now the current Prime Minister. At the same time, these robber barons have been allowed to set up a system with low competition, high charges and fees, and conduct that is not appropriate.
We can remember that, recently, because of their own turf war, these companies failed Canadians who needed to make 911 calls during an emergency. We lost control of emergency services because of two children having a fight in the playground. What was the response? It was not a whole lot. We had to come up with a legislative solution. The minister was actually out of the country and had to call the companies and beg for us to get back online. That is the nature of these companies.
When I came here originally, Bell Canada would not even follow through with the mandate for pay equity for its women workers at the time. We had to bring in the CEO of Bell, who was actually later hired by the Prime Minister for a side job, to get equal pay for women in their own company. We had hearings here in Ottawa on that. This is the routine behaviour of some of the industry toward Canadians on a regular basis.
I can go on with a few other examples. I congratulate the minister for the TTC, but why did it take the minister's intervention to get cellphone service sorted out properly in an area that is dangerous and is used by millions of people each day? Again, the children on the playground had to be brought together to get a solution.
On the Shaw-Rogers takeover, how outrageous is it that the minister still has not responded? I wrote him a letter about it. Our Competition Bureau took that to court, because we would not do the right thing in this place to stop the takeover and have fewer entries into the market. The Competition Bureau, which is the public interest, took them to court to challenge it. It is a routine thing that other countries do.
What did Rogers do? It sued the Competition Bureau, and outrageously, it has to pay Rogers $8 million for the Competition Bureau just to protect Canadians. Meanwhile, the Competition Bureau has to do all kinds of legislative work and other types of work. Basically, the watchdog ends up paying the robber baron at the end of the day.
What would this bill do? There are a couple of things New Democrats have been calling for. Number one is cellphone service as an essential service, flat out, full stop. It is involved in one's life and emergencies. Remember when the government, for immigration, put out that one could get on the immigration file very quickly? With a higher speed of service, one actually got the spots from the government. The government did that, and it was a policy. Therefore, one's speed affects not only that but also one's work, school and the way one can be involved in life.
The rural component is really abused in this country. In fact, since the pandemic, the speeds have not improved very much. Meanwhile, urban speeds are going up again. Again, New Democrats have called for this to be an essential service.
In addition, we called for stopping the cash grab as a policy that ends up putting those profits, or subsidies, back into the companies. An alternative model, which other countries have used, is to demand that when a company gets a spectrum, it has to have some low-cost service fees for seniors, persons with disabilities and low-income earners, and the speeds have to be the same. We can do that through a mandate the way they do the RFP, request for proposal, on how we sell the spectrum.
Instead, we have added diction for the $21 billion and growing. Until we actually change that process, we are going to pass on that $21 billion. This is not only in terms of the cost going to the public, and where it has gone in the past many years is unbelievable, but also in terms of the expense, which will go to consumers. What do the big companies do? They pass on the cost of the spectrum to their customers.
Let us think about this as a Canadian. Our own government takes our resource, gobbles it up, sells it and then tries to squeeze every single cent it can out of the spectrum auction for whatever else it can get. It then passes on that cost back to the people.
I previously mentioned those former prime ministers. The other thing they have in common is that they have cut corporate taxes when these CEOs and these companies are making record profits. There are no terms and conditions, despite the product, the spectrum, being our own. I do not care if someone is a Canadian on Bay Street, up north, in Alberta, in Quebec, in Newfoundland or in Ontario, and I can go on, but we all own this equally.
It is now a toll road in the sky. That is what we have created with our natural asset. By the way, not all toll roads are created equal. If someone is from a rural area, they get a double whammy. Not only is their resource used against them for the price and costing, but they also get a poor product. That is just plain and simple.
This bill stops one of the worst practices we have. I really want to thank Senator Patterson for this. If someone were to buy spectrum, we were allowing the purchaser to then resell it. How stupid is that? It is not in the public interest that we would actually go out there, try to squeeze what we can out of a company and then let the company that got the spectrum sell it for a profit without doing any work, with no terms and conditions.
Where do people think that cost goes? We get a double layer. How about double or triple taxation? This is unacceptable. Again, this goes back to Chrétien, Martin, Harper and now the current PM in terms of the philosophy. Senator Patterson's bill fixes that one problem. Companies will no longer be allowed to go and do that. We are actually ransoming our asset against ourselves.
When we go to committee with this bill, it will only touch on certain things. Not all those things are going to be dealt with, but these are controllables right now. We have to lower the price of cellphones and services, but we need a prime minister and a minister who are willing to put in place terms and conditions as never before to build out our system, as opposed to just trying to do a cash deal, take the money and run.
We are at $21 billion, and right now, it is estimated that to connect all Canadians at a reasonable rate, it should be $6 billion. By the way, the reasonable rate is set by the CRTC, and the NDP says that should be the floor, not the ceiling. It should be the best, not the worst that someone can get. With $6 billion, we could actually roll out the proper coverage and connection. Our policies should be based upon that.
What is really unfortunate about this is that we have done it to ourselves. It is up to us to fix this now. We cannot continue to have a policy that does nothing other than to be a cash grab for the prime minister of the day, with the fallout of high prices, low accountability, and low standards and services from companies that have to be reined in because of the way they aggressively pursue actions against their own customers.
