What a fucking joke. First this corrupt deal passes and now we get to pay for the entirely correct attempt to stop it. Nationalize the newly merged company as a warning to others, I say.
[edit] And what does the judge’s finances look like? He buy anything nice recently?
Fucking rampant corruption everywhere. Do they not realize we are about to fail totally if it keeps going like that ? I mean I make what used do be a descent salary but I’m about to go homeless and lose my car if I can’t find a brake (Of course I can’t some asshole decided to bust my Tire, hurr SUV BAD, why don’t you do it to privet jets instead?)… Sorry had to rant.
Shamefully I did not follow this story. Can someone give me the run down on how this merger was permitted?
On the surface it seemed like a pretty easy anticompetitive case. But I am not even close to being a lawyer.
They’ve infiltrated every level of government. The CRTC exists to only rubber stamp whatever it is that Robellus wants to do, they just have the appearance of pretending to try and encourage competition. They’ve also been infiltrated.
Our federal and provincial governments need a complete cleaning, top to bottom. Canadians need actual consumer protections, not capitalist bootlicking.
I have a love-hate relationship with Canadaland, but will fully acknowledge that their series on monopolies in Canada was excellent: https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/introducing-the-new-season-monopoly/
The argument was that Shaw and Rogers generally don’t compete in the same markets. Rogers wanted Shaw to expand their presence in the west. Shaw wanted the deal because they are actually a horribly managed company and didn’t want to spend the money needed to upgrade their ancient copper lines or roll out 5G towers. They are a shell of the company they were 10+ years ago.
The one area they did compete was in wireless, and they were forced to sell off Freedom Mobile.
Honestly as a Freedom customer this deal has been fantastic. Quebecor has done more in the past 6 months to expand their service than Shaw has done in the previous 2 years. Prices have dropped, they eliminated the nationwide data cap, rolled out 5G, and the overall quality of the service has improved substantially.
So on the surface it sucks because we lost a major player in the tv/home internet space, but they were rapidly fading into obscurity anyway. I would have seen Quebecor buy them in their entirety and merge them with Videotron, but as it stands not much of value was lost.
You know we’re all screwed when even the government body in place to prevent anticompetitive deals can’t actually achieve that legally.
The Canadian Competition Tribunal, brought to you by Shawgers™.
When corporate interests have more power than the government … it’s called a plutocracy … not a democracy
Harper: a government cannot bind the hands of a future government
Also Harper: except by appointing the right judge to the competition tribunal
