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Canada's competition laws are a joke. All Rogers/Shaw had to do was to prove that the merger would be profitable for themselves.
That's it. For the merger to be approved, they had to prove it would be profitable.
Canada's monopoly laws actively encourage monopolies.
The country is a joke
And I thought American antitrust was bad. What the hell is happening up there??
Canada has a very serious oligarch problem.
New Brunswick is literally owned by one family. (There's circumstantial evidence that they're poisoning a portion of the population in New Brunswick)
Our largest national grocer is owned by one family. (They've raised prices causing inflation that's hurting the entire country)
One of our largest telecom companies? Yep. One family. (Canada has some of the most expensive telecommunications in the world)
Our mining companies commit atrocities all over the world.
Our government fights tooth and nail to ensure there's no real opposition. We've only ever had two parties elected and they do the same things, but talk differently. (If you're American, that probably sounds familiar)
@Jaytreeman sik0fewl@kbin.social have you seen the posts by @blair_fix on Canada's oligarch billionaires?
eg
"the corporate power networks owned by Canada's billionaire families"
https://mastodon.online/@blair_fix/110595839690056922
and
"10 billionaire families own more wealth than the bottom third of Canadians"
That'll teach the competition bureau from... checks notes... Doing its job?
Yeah this feels kind a real what-the-fuck moment. This whole system needs to be overhauled
The bureau's biggest concern was the deal would lessen competition in a country where wireless bills are already among the highest in the world.
In March, Canada approved Rogers' buyout of Shaw Communications after securing binding commitments to pay financial penalties if it failed to create new jobs and invest to expand its network.
"We're concerned this blatant monopolization is going to cost Canadians more money on their basic services."
"Yeah, but if they throw a couple management positions in and hide their profits in 'network investments' (which may or may not include gobbling up even more service providers), then it's all good, right?"
The back-story here: a couple of decades ago, Rogers decided to expand east after profitable regions, instead of being a western cable company in direct competition with Shaw. After they realized how much more money they were making, they then sold Western Canada holdings to Shaw.
Fast forward to today, and these not-really-competing cable companies turned media conglomerates want to merge, leaving us with Telus and Bell as the competition.
What is this, Agar.io?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Aug 29 (Reuters) - Canada's merger court asked the competition bureau to pay about C$13 million ($9.58 million) to Rogers Communications (RCIb.TO) and Shaw Communications for the lengthy court battle after its failed attempt to block the telecom firms' C$20-billion merger.
The Competition Tribunal, Canada's merger court, in a ruling dated Aug. 28 said the Commissioner of Competition Matthew Boswell's approach to block the deal was "unreasonable".
The companies maintained that Boswell "adopted an unnecessarily contentious approach throughout the litigation, which significantly increased the costs that they were required to incur," the tribunal said.
The Rogers-Shaw merger had faced intense opposition from Canada's antitrust regulator whose efforts to block it were rejected by the Competition Tribunal and a Canadian court.
The bureau's biggest concern was the deal would lessen competition in a country where wireless bills are already among the highest in the world.
In March, Canada approved Rogers' buyout of Shaw Communications after securing binding commitments to pay financial penalties if it failed to create new jobs and invest to expand its network.
The original article contains 179 words, the summary contains 174 words. Saved 3%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
It's terrible enough this merger was allowed to even happen, now we are paying for it in what I am guessing is tax dollars.
At what point will we be replacing the maple leaf with the rogers logo?
When we’ve all been rogered?
The only way to counter this is to increase corporate taxes on Telcoms.
They’d love that; it would give them the excuse to post losses and cut “redundant staff”, all while making it harder for new players to enter the market.