NOW is the time to fix this deeply wrong, unjust telecom system — for good.
The July 8 nationwide Rogers outage left over ten million people without essential connectivity, halted our emergency services, and had our entire banking system scrambling.5,6 Regardless of how or why it happened, it’s incredibly clear: having one or two companies with so much unchecked power over our critical infrastructure is dangerous — and Canadians deserve recourse.
In light of this disaster, it’s more urgent now than any other time in Canadian history to finally dismantle Big Telecom’s monopoly powers — the ones that threaten our safety, abuse us through exploitative sales practices, and charge us some of the highest prices for Internet and cell phone services on the planet.7-10
Are we going to let Rogers get away scot-free after what happened on July 8 — and even REWARD them, approving their plans to buy Shaw?11 If we don’t put enough pressure on Minister Champagne and Prime Minister Trudeau to do something, that’s the Canada we’ll be living in.
The game is rigged to favour monopolies over ordinary people. That’s why it is so profitable for Rogers to build risky systems where the whole house of cards — cell phone networks, home Internet, and everything else — falls when something goes wrong. That’s why Bell can crush smaller providers, jack up prices, and leave regular people holding the bag.12,13 It’s why Big Telecom gets to snatch millions in public COVID-relief dollars, then turn around and pay it out to their shareholders, lay off employees — and suffer ZERO consequences.14 And it’s why Big Telecom seems to make the rules at the CRTC, holding hundreds of private lobbying meetings with officials while forcing us to pay some of the highest prices for basic connectivity in the world.15-17
It’s time for change, and the buck stops with Innovation Minister Champagne. As an elected official who serves Canadians first and foremost, it’s his responsibility to do everything he can to protect us from the monopolies that hurt us. Sign the petition NOW to demand that he pull all the stops to start smashing Big Telecom’s monopoly powers!