Last week, the federal Cabinet rejected appeals that would have lowered internet prices for millions of Canadians. TekSavvy and other competitors had asked Cabinet to enforce the lower wholesale rates set by the CRTC in 2019, which the CRTC later controversially reversed.
Cabinet’s decision endorses higher prices and misconduct by the head of the CRTC, amounting to a big loss for consumers and competition in general.
Instead of immediately lowering prices by overturning a bad CRTC decision, Cabinet has promised to improve the CRTC with a proposed new policy direction. Yet it is hard to hold out hope that the CRTC will do better in the future when there is no accountability for its anti-consumer activity today.
In particular, Cabinet ignored photographic evidence of misconduct by CRTC Chair Ian Scott. Mr. Scott was photographed in a private “one on one” meeting with Mirko Bibic, the chief executive of Bell, at an Ottawa bar just one week after Bell filed an appeal to the CRTC concerning wholesale internet rates. The CRTC then arbitrarily reversed its own 2019 rate decision, resulting in higher prices for millions of Canadians throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
We argued that Mr. Scott is clearly offside the standards required CRTC appointees, as confirmed by Cabinet’s termination of one CRTC Commissioner for far less in 2017. Mr. Scott is also currently under investigation by the Conflicts of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. None of this apparently bothered the Cabinet enough to do the right thing for Canadian internet users.
Despite Canada’s cost of living crisis, any potential solution on telecom prices now appears to be many months, if not years, away. In the meantime, Canadians will continue to pay some of the highest prices in the world.
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