That might have been Prime Minister Mark Carney’s motto when he unveiled his new cabinet before triggering an election that saw his Liberals returned to power.
While Carney’s cabinet largely kept familiar faces from the Trudeau regime, almost every minister changed jobs, and the cabinet itself was significantly downsized.
Throughout Carney’s brief stint in power, he’s broken with former prime minister Justin Trudeau in a few important ways, including scrapping the consumer carbon tax and stopping the Trudeau government’s planned capital gains tax hike.
When it comes to competition in Canada’s telecom industry, Carney has yet another opportunity to break with the failures of the Trudeau years.
François-Philippe Champagne, who served as innovation minister for the last four years of the Trudeau regime, has been replaced by Anita Anand, one of the government’s more competent ministers.
Champagne famously stood in the way of more telecom competition when he was in the portfolio. Anand has a chance to flip the script and bring more internet competition to Canadians.
The unfortunate reality for Canadians is that in most areas of the country, consumers only have two major internet providers to choose from.
The CRTC, Canada’s communications regulator, has long argued that consumers would benefit from cross-regional competition, which would encourage more of Canada’s major regional internet providers to enter markets in other areas of the country.
This could help break Canada’s regional telecom duopolies.
The CRTC recently upheld an important decision it made a couple of years ago to force big internet companies to share their fibre networks with other companies, with their competitors able to access those networks at prices determined by the CRTC.
If Canada had more network sharing, we could also have more competition. That, in turn, would bring down consumer prices.
Here’s where Champagne comes into the picture.
Bell was against the CRTC’s decision, essentially seeking to protect regional duopolies. While the CRTC didn’t give in to Bell’s lobbying seeking to block network sharing, a final decision on network sharing has yet to be made.
And there may have been lobbying from industry to Champagne’s office trying to block network sharing.
One of Bell’s competitors, Telus, filed a motion in court alleging that Ottawa is withholding documents that could very well show that Champagne’s office was lobbied to come out against network sharing, despite the CRTC’s position.
If Anand wants to bring a breath of fresh air into the innovation ministry, she should make Telus’s court move a moot point by ordering the release of the documents Telus is looking for.
The Trudeau government had an infamous legacy for failing to be transparent with Canadians. From the SNC-Lavalin Affair to sole-sourced contracts in the We Charity Scandal, there are too many instances of a lack of transparency to cite.
If the Carney government wants to be different, Anand should be forthright with Canadians and release the documents related to network sharing lobbying that occurred when Champagne was minister.
Beyond transparency, allowing for more competition in Canada’s telecom sector is essential as Canada faces an ongoing trade conflict with the United States. There’s a major renewed focus on tearing down domestic inter-provincial trade barriers by July 1 and doing whatever Canada can to strengthen our domestic economy given tariffs being imposed by the United States.
Given that reality, why would the government want to try to protect duopolies and restrict competition, which would lower costs for Canadians? Removing inter-provincial trade barriers ought to mean removing barriers to the free flow of both goods and services.
Anand should come out and side with the CRTC and ignore Bell’s lobbying to restrict consumer choice. It’s time for Ottawa to make a final verdict and allow for network sharing to lower costs for consumers and promote more competition in Canada’s telecom space. At a minimum, it’s time for transparency and Anand should release the files Champagne’s office was trying to hide.
Originally published here
