Federal NDP leadership frontrunner Avi Lewis has put forward a plan that would “guarantee universal, affordable and high-speed connectivity, including in rural, remote and Indigenous communities.”
The promise is a surefire way to gain traction in the leadership race. Canadians pay for some of the most expensive phone plans in the world. A 2021 review from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) said that studies “consistently reported higher retail prices in Canada.” One firm’s 2022 study found that Canada’s wireless plans rank among the most expensive in the world. That study showed that Canada’s cost per gigabyte is 25 times higher than in Ireland or France, and seven times higher than Australia.
Lewis rightly points out the price gouging carried out by the “Big Three” monopolies (Bell, Rogers, and Telus), and says it’s “time to take the power back from the price-fixing corporate cartels”.
Lewis’ plan is to create a “network of public telecom providers” to give Canadians a “public option” similar to SaskTel in Saskatchewan. But what exactly he means by this is unclear. Back in September, when the CBC’s David Cochrane suggested Lewis was advocating for nationalizing telecoms, he was quick to push back: “I didn’t say nationalizing!”—he was only suggesting “public options.” But without nationalizing the telecom giants, what would this actually look like?
SaskTel’s model is based on publicly owned infrastructure (cable and phone lines, cell towers, etc.) that is managed by a public company. In the rest of the country, all this infrastructure is owned by the Big Three (plus Vidéotron in Quebec). Without nationalizing this infrastructure, the option is either to build new, redundant infrastructure or, like smaller telecoms companies, pay a fee to use the Big Three’s infrastructure.
In the first case, this would involve billions of dollars of investment, laying hundreds of thousands of kilometers of fibre optic cables and erecting tens of thousands of new cell towers, all to recreate infrastructure that already exists.
On the other hand, paying to use the private infrastructure also poses substantial risks. If a public option, created through regulations alone, were to attempt to offer a serious challenge to the monopolies’ control of the market, the monopolies would retaliate. In 2023, when the CRTC imposed stricter regulations on the Big Three requiring them to share infrastructure with smaller operators, Bell responded by cutting more than $1 billion in planned investments. In spite of regulations, as long the networks are privately owned, the Big Three still hold the cards.
SaskTel itself is proof of this, as it comes under pressure from the monopolies. The 2023 regulations have meant that they, too, must now share their lines with “competitors,” i.e. let the telecoms giants use their public network for private gain. This is part of the reason why SaskTel’s returns have been declining—the Big Three leech off public networks, and their fat profit margins in the rest of the country enable them to swallow fees in order to consistently undercut prices and elbow Sasktel out of more remote markets.
Sooner or later, SaskTel may also find itself in the crosshairs of the capitalists. Similar companies in British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba were privatized in the 1990s when, just like today, the crisis of capitalism demanded strict austerity.
Lewis claims a public option will not only offer lower prices, but force the monopolies to lower theirs, too. But in reality, a public company that funnels money back into private hands would get undercut on the market, and eventually squeezed out.
So with the networks at the whim of the monopolies, and nationalization apparently off the table, what other realistic “public option” is left? In pushing for a “pragmatic” solution, Lewis has painted himself into a utopian corner.
Lewis’s aversion to nationalizing the telecom giants shows that behind all his radical language is a refusal to go beyond the limits of private property. But the only way to bring down prices is to break the rule of the monopolies, by expropriating them.
Rogers, Bell, and Telus have already received billions in corporate welfare, and what have they done with it? In 2024, in the wake of saving $40 million from government cuts to regulations, Bell fired 4,800 workers. In 2021, all three companies used COVID wage subsidies to pay out shareholders (Bell and Telus even increased payouts) while firing workers. Their CEOs ranked among the highest paid in the country. These companies are nothing but parasites.
Lewis is right that we need to “take the power back from the price-fixing corporate cartels”. But to do that, we need a serious program—one that recognizes the need to cut these leeches out of the equation, and expropriate the Big Three companies without compensation. Only a nationalized, democratically controlled telecommunications company can provide these important services while cutting costs for Canadian workers.
Such a program would mean breaking with capitalism—and that’s exactly what we need. The only “option for the public” is to expropriate the parasites.
