Conservative Party leader candidate Maxime Bernier says Canadian consumers are best served when telecom providers are free to compete and invest, not when bureaucrats tell them what to do, and that there is therefore no need for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and its regulations (via the Canadian Press).
From his perspective – detailed to the audience of the Canadian Telecom Summit in Toronto – it’s not the regulators or the government’s role to decide how the telecom market should evolve: Let the producers and consumers decide that. He says that the telecom industry “is not a playground for bureaucrats” and calls for a phase out of the CRTC in its role as a telecom regulator.
Almost everyone agrees that more competition is good for consumers. It’s easy to understand that when companies are forced to compete, they tend to offer better services and lower prices. The problem is to determine how to foster competition. Interventionist policies that are meant to bring more competition actually do the opposite.
Instead of the CRTC, the Department of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development should take over the remaining essential functions, including social regulation, and let the Competition Bureau deal with competition issues.
He had harsh words for the CRTC and its work done so far. For example, he criticized the government’s telecom policy of setting aside spectrum for new entrants so they can launch wireless services. He says competitive markets “don’t need government intervention to work; they only need to be free”, so he called for opening the sector fully to foreign investors.
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Well, I wonder who bought him ?
What? He supports foreign investment so he clearly was not bought by any of the Canadian telecoms.
What a load of crap! Bernier is a fool! I can’t understand why he gets reelected time after time. And now he wants to lead the Conservatives?
“Canadian consumers are best served when telecom providers are free to compete and invest”..
*jaw drop*
Amongst all 3 of them?
“Almost everyone agrees that more competition is good for consumers.” … “he criticized the government’s telecom policy of setting aside spectrum for new entrants so they can launch wireless services”. This logic is baffling.
Free to compete? You mean when they are free to work together to offer the same stuff for the same high prices and change ever so slightly over time. Yes we need other competitors in the industry, but the main problem is that they don’t compete, they just all work together. Allowing less oversight would just make this worse. We need a CRTC with a backbone.
Right… so let’s take the already horribly-unfair industry and get rid of all their regulations. What could possibly go wrong?!
more competition is needed in canada. the consumer is in need of this. but, the issue remains that canada doesn’t have enough people. maybe we should open the boarders with the usa in other ways???
I hope this fool will not be seriously considered as a PC leader….he has nothing going for him and this dumb “suggestion” is yet another proof how sad the political class in Canada is.
Except the current market is an oligopoly colluding together to keep prices high. The current market has been created by subsidies to telecom companies over the past 70 years. There is no free market at this point and removing the CRTC would hurt the consumer.
But he is correct that a proper free market would benefit the consumer. Unfortunately his rhetoric assumes incorrectly that we have a free market.