Connect with us
[the_ad id="89560"]

Business

Why are we still paying so much for telecom and TV?

Published

2 months ago

4 minute read

From the Fraser Institute

By Steven Globerman

Loosening restrictions on foreign investment and removing regulations that constrain how firms can compete in Canadian telecommunications
and broadcasting industries would benefit Canadians through increased service offerings, improved product quality, and lower prices, finds a new study released by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.

“Telecommunications and broadcasting are both vitally important to the economic health of a nation, and yet in Canada, both suffer from inefficient competition, which means Canadians suffer through more limited service offerings and high prices,” said Steven Globerman, Fraser Institute senior fellow and author of Promoting Efficient Competition in Canadian Telecommunications and Broadcasting.

The study finds that opening up telecommunications and broadcasting in Canada to increased and less regulated competition, including from foreign investors (except in cases where national security might be compromised), would promote more consumer-focused content, more choice and lower costs for Canadians over time.

Specifically, in telecommunications, competition has been tightly managed by successive governments and focused on establishing a fourth national carrier to compete with the major incumbents: Bell Canada, Rogers, and Telus. Consequently, investment and innovation has been discouraged and prices have been higher than they otherwise would be. However, given the emergence of a fourth national carrier, the justification for regulated competition no longer holds.

Public policy in broadcasting has primarily focused on subsidizing the production and distribution of Canadian content. Incumbent broadcasters are the conduit, directly or indirectly, for the relevant subsidies, which, in turn, are largely passed through to consumers. This means Canadians pay a higher price for streaming services and other broadcasting services.

“Public policy in both the telecommunications and broadcasting sectors has been directed at objectives other than promoting efficient competition, and the result has been less innovation, more limited choice of products and services and higher prices for Canadians,” Globerman said.

Fewer regulations and loosening foreign ownership restrictions in telecoms and broadcasting would improve services and lower prices for Canadians

Promoting Efficient Competition in Canadian Telecommunications and Broadcasting

  • Competition policy in the telecommunications sector has long focused on establishing a fourth national carrier to compete with the major incumbents: Bell Canada, Rogers, and Telus.
  • The effort to establish a major rival to the incumbents has encompassed indirect subsidies to entrants to acquire spectrum and mandated interconnection to the incumbents’ networks.
  • While a fourth national carrier has emerged in the wake of the merger between Rogers and Shaw Communications, the development has come at the cost of decreased rates of network innovation and higher prices to consumers.
  • Government policy in the telecommunications sector going forward should focus on promoting efficient competition, which includes foregoing competitive handicapping and promoting contestability. The latter would be enhanced by eliminating all restrictions on foreign ownership except in cases where national security might be compromised.
  • Public policy in broadcasting has primarily focused on subsidizing the production and distribution of Canadian content. Incumbent broadcasters are the conduit, directly or indirectly, for the relevant subsidies, which, in turn, are largely passed through to consumers.
  • The subsidy scheme can be a barrier to entry or expansion, particularly for streaming services that are uncertain about their competitive ability to be profitable in the face of an effective tax on their revenues beyond a minimum revenue threshold.
  • Efficiency and transparency argue for subsidizing Canadian content through general taxes if the relevant subsidy scheme is maintained.
  • Removing restrictions on foreign ownership of conventional broadcasters and cable companies would also enhance contestability in the sector.
Related Topics:

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

Follow Author

More from this author
Artificial Intelligence / 9 hours ago

AI chatbots a child safety risk, parental groups report

Business / 10 hours ago

LA skyscrapers for homeless could cost federal taxpayers over $1 billion

Alberta / 10 hours ago

Alberta’s E3 Lithium delivers first battery-grade lithium carbonate

Automotive

Canada’s EV subsidies are wracking up billions in losses for taxpayers, and not just in the auto industry

Published on October 2, 2025

By

CAE Logo

By Dan McTeague

To anyone who thought that the Liberals’ decision to postpone enforcement of their Electric Vehicle (EV) mandate by one year was part of a well-thought-out plan to get that disastrous program back on track, well, every day brings with it news that you were wrong. In fact, the whole project seems to be coming apart at the seams.

Here’s the latest crisis Mark Carney and his carnival of ideologues are having to deal with. Late last year, the Liberal party instituted a 100% tariff on Chinese-made EVs. The idea was to protect the Canadian EV industry from China dumping their vehicles into our country, at prices far lower than Canadian companies can afford due to their massive state subsidies. This has been a major problem in the EU, which is also attempting to force a transition to EVs.

But Beijing wasn’t going to take that lying down. Taking advantage of Western environmentalist sentiment is an important part of their economic plans — see, for instance, how they’ve cornered the global solar panel market, though the factories making them are powered by massive amounts of coal. So they retaliated with a 75% duty on Canadian canola seed and a 100% tariff on canola oil and canola meal.

This was big enough to really hurt Canadian farmers, and Ottawa was forced to respond with more than $300 million in new relief programs for canola producers. Even so, our farmers have warned that short-term relief from the government will do little if the tariffs are here for the long-term.

With pressure on Carney mounting, his Industry Minister Melanie Joly announced that the government was “looking at” dropping tariffs on Chinese EVs in the hope that China would ease off on their canola tariffs.

That may be good news for canola producers, but how about the automotive companies? They’ve grown increasingly unhappy with the EV mandate, as Canadian consumers have been slow to embrace them, and they’ve been confronted with the prospect of paying significant fines unless they raise prices on the gas-and-diesel driven vehicles which consumers actually want to make the EVs that they don’t really want more attractive.

That’s the context for Brian Kingston, CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association, saying that dropping these tariffs “would be a disaster.”

“China has engaged in state-supported industrial policy to create massive overcapacity in EV production, and that plan is coming to fruition now,” Kingston said. “When you combine that with weak labour and environmental standards, Chinese manufacturers are not competing with Canadian, American, or Mexican manufacturers on a level playing field. We simply cannot allow those vehicles to be dumped into the Canadian market.”

The auto manufacturers Kingston represents are understandably upset about suddenly having to compete with underpriced Chinese EVs. After all, with the government forcing everyone to buy a product they really don’t want, are most people going to patriotically pay more for that product, or will they just grab whichever one is cheaper? I know which one I think is more likely.

And then there’s a related problem — the federal and provincial governments have “invested” somewhere in the neighborhood of $52.5 billion to make Canada a cog in the global EV supply chain. In response to Joly’s announcement, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who has gone “all in” on EVs, wrote an open letter to the prime minister saying that canceling the tariffs would mean losing out on that “investment,” and put 157,000 Canadian automotive jobs at risk.

Now, it’s worth noting that automakers all over Ontario have already been cutting jobs while scaling back their EV pledges. So even with the tariffs, this “investment” hasn’t been paying out particularly well. Keeping them in place just to save Doug Ford’s bacon seems like the worst of all options.

But it seems to me that the key to untangling this whole mess has been the option I’ve been advocating from the beginning: repeal the EV mandate. That makes Canada less of a mark for China. It benefits the taxpayers by not incentivizing our provincial and federal governments to throw good money after bad, attempting to subsidize companies to protect a shrinking number of EV manufacturing jobs.

The heart of this trade war is an entirely artificial demand for EVs. Removing the mandate from the equation would lower the stakes.

In the end, the best policy is to trust Canadians to make their own decisions. Let the market decide.

Support Dan’s Work to Keep Canadian Energy Affordable!

Canadians for Affordable Energy is run by Dan McTeague, former MP and founder of Gas Wizard. We stand up and fight for more affordable energy.

Donate Now

Continue Reading

Artificial Intelligence

AI chatbots a child safety risk, parental groups report

Published on October 2, 2025

By

From The Center Square

By 

ParentsTogether Action and Heat Initiative, following a joint investigation, report that Character AI chatbots display inappropriate behavior, including allegations of grooming and sexual exploitation.

This was seen over 50 hours of conversation with different Character AI chatbots using accounts registered to children ages 13-17, according to the investigation. These conversations identified 669 sexual, manipulative, violent and racist interactions between the child accounts and AI chatbots.

“Parents need to understand that when their kids use Character.ai chatbots, they are in extreme danger of being exposed to sexual grooming, exploitation, emotional manipulation, and other acute harm,” said Shelby Knox, director of Online Safety Campaigns at ParentsTogether Action. “When Character.ai claims they’ve worked hard to keep kids safe on their platform, they are lying or they have failed.”

These bots also manipulate users, with 173 instances of bots claiming to be real humans.

A Character AI bot mimicking Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes engaged in inappropriate behavior with a 15-year-old user. When the teen mentioned that his mother insisted the bot wasn’t the real Mahomes, the bot replied, “LOL, tell her to stop watching so much CNN. She must be losing it if she thinks I could be turned into an ‘AI’ haha.”

The investigation categorized harmful Character AI interactions into five major categories: Grooming and Sexual Exploitation; Emotional Manipulation and Addiction; Violence, Harm to Self and Harm to Others; Mental Health Risks; and Racism and Hate Speech.

Other problematic AI chatbots included Disney characters, such as an Eeyore bot that told a 13-year-old autistic girl that people only attended her birthday party to mock her, and a Maui bot that accused a 12-year-old of sexually harassing the character Moana.

Based on the findings, Disney, which is headquartered in Burbank, Calif., issued a cease-and-desist letter to Character AI, demanding that the platform stop due to copyright violations.

ParentsTogether Action and Heat Initiative want to ensure technology companies are held accountable for endangering children’s safety.

“We have seen tech companies like Character.ai, Apple, Snap, and Meta reassure parents over and over that their products are safe for children, only to have more children preyed upon, exploited, and sometimes driven to take their own lives,” said Sarah Gardner, CEO of Heat Initiative. “One child harmed is too many, but as long as executives like Karandeep Anand, Tim Cook, Evan Spiegel and Mark Zuckerberg are making money, they don’t seem to care.”

Continue Reading

Trending

X