Rogers-Shaw Tribunal hearings reveal the extent of Telus efforts to block merger

The second week of the Competition Tribunal's hearing into whether or not Rogers Communications Inc. should be allowed to acquire Shaw Communications Inc. and sell Shaw's Freedom to Quebecor Inc. began with the revelation that Telus Corp. had a lobbying and public relations effort aimed at stopping the merger, known as Project Fox. According to testimony from Telus' vice-president of finance Charlie Casey, Project Fox was a multi-pronged lobbying effort, aimed at convincing the CRTC, the Competition Bureau, and the Department of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development (ISED) – the three regulators in charge of approving various aspects of the deal – to block the deal. A slideshow as part of a second quarter 2022 update to the company's board of directors revealed a number of the tactics used by the company to influence various parts of the regulatory apparatus. When it came to the CRTC, in May Telus filed a petition in support of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre's effort to get the cabinet to overturn the CRTC's approval of the broadcasting licence transfers from Shaw to Rogers. "To leverage the Rogers outage," the slideshow continues, Telus also held a number of meetings with the Competition Bureau "to reiterate the security risks resulting from the elimination of redundancy" With ISED, the body responsible for approving the transfer of spectrum from Shaw to divestment partner Quebecor, Telus' "advocacy highlights danger of as remedy partner," and asked that that the spectrum not be transferred, Telus' board of director heard. The western telecom also worked to lobby political leaders, and in a memo on the matter used as evidence in the tribunal hearing, Telus touted NDP leader Jagmeet Singh's repeated questions to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urging him to block the merger. Strikingly, in another internal Telus note authored by now retired executive vice-president of technology strategy Eros Spadotto also used as evidence, executives at the company contemplated a range of other action aimed at shaping public opinion on the merger, including releasing public opinion research through think tanks like the CD Howe institute and the MacDonald Laurier Institute, commission research on anticipated job losses from the merger, and "seed regulatory/legal analysis with friendly reporters." In a section of the note marked as having a "medium" level of engagement and risk, the company also considered trying to "seed" questions for the leaders debates during the federal election, and seed answers with leaders around potential job losses ("i.e. have O'Toole respond to a generic jobs/economy question with talking points.") In another section marked as having a "high" level of engagement and risk, Telus considered "meme factory engagement" with the Facebook accounts North 99 and the National Meme Board of Canada, and lobbying the unions representing Shaw workers to campaign against the merger. In the same section of the memo, Telus also considered attempting to "mobilize western alienation and seed information with those groups that this is a bad deal for western Canada." "Can we frame this deal as an Eastern Canada takeover of a Western Canada company?" asks one "brainstorming" note in the memo, as well as a note asking "could we attempt to drive a review of the competition act in the middle of the review?" Beyond the lobbying of ISED, the CRTC, and politicians, it is unclear to what extent Telus pursued the strategies. — Reporting by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca and editing by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca.

Rogers-Shaw Tribunal hearings reveal the extent of Telus efforts to block merger

Broadcast | November 14, 2022

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Rogers-Shaw Tribunal hearings reveal the extent of Telus efforts to block merger

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