Safeguards can’t justify Rogers-Shaw merger: Bell to CRTC

No amount of proposed remedies will undo the damage of Rogers Communications Inc. gaining 47 per cent of the English-language broadcast distribution undertaking (BDU) market, according to representatives of BCE Inc., who Thursday asked CRTC commissioners not to approve their chief competitor's proposed takeover of Shaw Communications Inc. Bell's chief legal and regulatory officer Rob Malcolmson told commissioners that Bell had been following the previous days of hearing testimony closely. "It's clear that they're universally fearful of the market power Rogers is asking you to confer upon them," Malcolmson said, pointing to the number of additional safeguards and remedies that various interveners -- including Cogeco Inc. and the Canadian Communication Systems Alliance -- had proposed, including a ban on BDU over-the-top exclusives on digital platforms, a ban on defacto exclusives, changes to the comission's dispute resolution process, regulating wholesale fees, and implementing package guarantees. As such, Malcolmson said Bell believes that the market power brought about by the merger can not be softened by any regulatory safeguards. "We looked at all of those, and we said to ourselves -- and I believe that this is in the public interest -- those safeguards are not practical or realistic," he told commissioners. He added that the safeguards proposed by other interveners would "force upon the regulator an administrative and enforcement burden that will be impossible to meet." "It will result in a never-ending cycle of new claims of abuse of market power, and new pleas for a new safeguard to address a newly discovered use case." "That should signal to you that the market power Rogers is seeking to acquire here can't be fixed by a basket of remedies," Malcolmson said. In their September intervention to the CRTC about the Rogers-Shaw merger, Bell told regulators that the“level of market power sought by Rogers exceeds every relevant market power threshold ever established." “Such dominance is unprecedented in a market of this size and will give Rogers the power to ‘make or break’ programming services, resulting in one provider being able to dictate what content is available to Canadians, on what distribution platforms the content is available, regardless of where they live or which BDU they subscribe to,” Bell wrote at the time. Earlier in the day, representatives of the labour union Unifor raised concerns about the impact of the merger on employment. "The broadcast sector in Canada is facing an employment crisis," said Katha Fortier, assistant to Unifor president Jerry Dias. "We worrying trend of chronic job losses has been worsening year after year, and we are concerned that the proposed Rogers-Shaw takeover will only make things worse," she said, adding that Unifor membership in the broadcast sector decreased 23 per cent between 2014 and.2020. "Concentration, centralization, lack of regulation and funding, foreign competition. I watch them go one by one, with a heavy heart," Fortier said of her laid off colleagues. Unifor's director of media Randy Kitt asked commissioners to ensure that Rogers maintain funding for Corus Entertainment Inc.'s news stations until a "hearing can be concluded to ensure that the or other such equal funds can be in place to support the need of these Canadian communities." — Reporting by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca and editing by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca.

Safeguards can’t justify Rogers-Shaw merger: Bell to CRTC

Broadcast | November 25, 2021

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Safeguards can’t justify Rogers-Shaw merger: Bell to CRTC

Broadcast | November 25, 2021

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