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Telecom union says Gov’t “is a sellout” and the Globalive “decision is illegal”
Globalive was given the green light on Friday to officially launch their WIND Mobile brand, today the fists are coming out from Canada’s largest telecom and media union.
Communications Energy and Paperworkers Union President Dave Coles stated that the government’s decision to overturn the Globalive’s CRTC rulings “is a sellout of Canadian national interests and a betrayal of Canadian culture… It is clear that this decision violates the Telecommunications Act, which the Conservatives have now declared will be enforced only if and when they feel like it… In straight forward terms, this decision is illegal and an affront to Canadian democracy.”
Ouch… harsh words. Coles continues his barrage by saying “Mr. Harper must be reminded that he presides over a minority government which has no mandate to change the character of Canada. A bill to eliminate our foreign ownership restrictions would not be supported by Canadians and it is highly unlikely it would be adopted by Parliament. If Mr. Harper wants to change Canada and sell out our telecom and cultural sectors to foreign investors, he should call an election and tell Canadians what he intends.”
Via: CEP
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37 comments for “Telecom union says Gov’t “is a sellout” and the Globalive “decision is illegal””
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i wonder how much Rogers paid him to say that
Wind gives me something that Canadian companies cant satisfy me with, baby!
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Actually, my money would be on Telus – they’ve been the most vocal about this.
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I guess he likes paying the SAF 911fees and LD in Canada yup. We are Canadian hence we must over pay for all things its in our culture
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don’t forget we have to pay his salary indirectly by paying more to Rogers/Tellus/Bell
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Unions….
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all what I hear is bla bla bla, I am on rogers payroll, help roger to help me.
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It seems pretty evident that what the union is scared of is the opening of other fields (eg air travel) to carriers that may not be a union-cozy as the current Canadian cartels. The union is right to fear competition: it will lead to the laying off of union fatcats and overpaid do-nothings. Competition does that. Go WIND!
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Union Fat cats never get fired. Its the poor working stiff that always gets it.
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As far as I can tell, approving the launch of WIND is pretty much the only thing the Harper government has done in the interest of Canadians.
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Ain’t it the truth. National interest, I’m glad he said that, it’s in our interest to have a good service provider that cares about the savings we want in our wallets. Since the rumblings of WIND and Dave wireless, I have yet to hear a single soul come out and say Rogers and Telus are good for A & B. No support at all, go WIND go!
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I think I heard this same kinda incessant whining when the CAW was going through it’s problems. Maybe, just maybe unions you can get the support of Canadians when you stop screwing us. You should have fought for us Canadians when we were complaining about our services and how much we pay. You should have fought for us when we said we were unhappy. Yet you continue to line your pockets while we get holes in ours. As a liberal, feel free to not vote conservative and maybe vote NDP. If you vote liberal, please let me know so I can vote conservative. I don’t want to align myself with your union.
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Wow they care nothing about the consumer only profit…
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Opens the way for foreign companies to buy Canada and eventually lose Canadian jobs though, when rogers bell/telus go down to this.
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lose Canadian jobs? like bell opening up a call center in India?
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Losing as in eventually shifting what is left of canadian call centres to India or Egypt. But competition is the name of the game
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From what I can see someone in Clements ‘Industry Canada’ screwed up big time and gave Globalive the go ahead way back. CRTC caught the mistake and brought it to the governments attention. Clement is stuck with his pants down looking mighty stupid so they send in the Government (indirectly, whispering in his ear) to try and clean up his mess. If they back out on the deal and followed the law as pointed out by the CRTC the government would be left holding a 1/2 billion dollar mistake that would erode foreign confidence and investment. They can’t move ahead directly because the law is being broken. So they bring in a team of lawyers to see how they can word the release to save embarrassment of the government and save taxpayers from footing a 1/2 billion dollar bill for nothing. Now however, precedence has been set whether they are willing to admit it or not. Fortunately there was a global economic meltdown that Clement can use as his scapegoat.
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“As far as I can tell, approving the launch of WIND is pretty much the only thing the Harper government has done in the interest of Canadians.”
My friend, I was thinking the EXACT same thing before I even made it to your comment..
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This union has hit the nail right on the head. Regardless of whether Wind launching is a good or bad thing, it is an illegal decision that has serious ramifications for our nation as a whole. The CRTC acted according to their mandate to uphold current Canadian law and made the right decision in Globalive’s hearings. If policy changes are to take place in telecommunication law then they should take place according to the legislative typical process. (and no, I do not work for an incumbent!)
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I’m always amazed at how quickly people commenting on this site are willing to sell out Canadian interests just to save a few bucks on your cell phone bill.
There are a lot of things Wind isn’t telling you. Just wait till you get a bill with roaming charges on it because you accidentally roamed onto another carriers network when Wind didn’t have a tower in your neighborhood.
Or maybe the first big shock will be when you walk into their store to get hooked up and your only option is to pay $600 for that Blackberry 9700 AWS (Which if you don’t like their network, service, ect. it will be useless on any other carriers network)
People complain about contracts all the time. The one thing they never bother listening to is the fact that they can go Month-to-Month and just pay for the phone outright.
I’m sure you all think rate plans will go down forever. Unfortunately thats not the case. Wind is here to make money and they can’t do that until they are charging with that market value currently is. In 3 years your monthly service fees will be right back up to where they are today.
You get what you pay for people and that will be a lot less then you expected.
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they can’t charge crazy roaming charges. That has already been worked out and there is legislation regarding it. Selling out? This situation could have all been avoided had any of the three carriers listened to their customers. Plus go month to month? As soon as my brother went month to month with bell, they started raising prices to try and get him to re-sign. You want good rates with the three, you have to be on a contract.
I like the way they throw the blame on the consumer. Wind is a Canadian company trying to start out. They couldn’t get Canadian financial backing so they went elsewhere. That is good business. If anyone should be ashamed, it should be canadians. We’re a great country that keeps selling out because it is forced to. Molson Canadian, Tim Hortons etc.
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You seem to assume quite a lot Kirk, and we’ll find out some of the answers to the supposed facts that you state.
But for now we know that you don’t HAVE to go contract free just that it’s an option.
It’s not that hard to unlock a phone so you could use it on ANY network if you decided you didn’t like WIND.
You seem to be another ignorant fool that has been tricked into believing that Canadians HAVE to pay the prices that Robelus is charging us because that is what they’re charging us.
Have you ever visited other countries and seen the rates that their citizens enjoy? If not why don’t you visit some U.S. cell phone websites like T-Mobile or Sprint and look at the rates that they enjoy.
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Let’s be realistic here. With capital markets in shambles, and Canadian financing nearly impossible to come by, where else was Globalive to get financing from? Old hat organizations like the crtc espouse the virtues of protecting our industries from foreign ownership yet at every turn we see foreign businesses operating in Canada. How comfortable would Canadians be abandoning our beloved Walmart, McDonalds and American TV stations? As Canadians, we rely heavily on foreign businesses to fill the void left by a lack of Canadian innovation. Even mighty rim has expressed difficulties doing business in Canada. What Canada needs is a refresh in executive level thinking. Status Quo is no longer acceptable and Canadians want and deserve choice. Its time to do away with the CRTC and welcome new governing bodies that will better represent the next decade in telecommunications, media, and internet.
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It’s weird how so many people are praising Wind, almost sounds like advertising. When they haven’t done anything yet….
Last time i check Wind is a company that wants to make money. There a reason they had $4.72 billion in revenue! Again i used to use them in Italy, for me never again even if they have lower prices, there service sucked (network wise & there customer service). The want to have a monopole on the wireless industries world wide.
What’s going to happen then, prices are going to sky rocket.
Don’t get me wrong i am more then happy that there are new telecoms DAVE and PUBLIC MOBILE, however i like them honest!
I don’t like a company that makes there way to Canada by buying out our governmental officials.
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Both Dave Wireless and Public Mobile were able to secure Canadian funding according to Canadian law, why not Wind? Everyone attacks the CRTC and yet they’re only acting according to the manadate they were given by the government. If changes are to be made they should be made legally not as dangerously precedent setting and corrupt “exceptions”. Don’t be naieve. The bottom line is that Clement’s decision was made on the basis of the two most common motivators in Politics: 1) Money 2) Power (Votes). In other words, Clement isn’t acting on behalf of Canada’s best long term national interests but those of his party.
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There is canadian innovation, we just happen to send it elsewhere. So a canadian company wants to start and has no backing. Crtc went ahead with it because they knew along with bell, telus and rogers that no one wld be able to come up with funds to really compete and buy enough spectrum. Surprise here comes david and down goes goliath. If anyone has a problem with it, you had your chance for god knows how long to listen to canadians and treat us fairly. Now the choice is not yours. This msg typed on my defective bell product. 800 bucks to get out of contract or 600 to buy a new one. Its only 7 months old.
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Sellout of Canadian national interests? More like a sellout of Canadian communications monopoly interests….
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Monopoly means many buyers, one seller. I count three sellers.
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I used to be a member of CEP.. yup… lets just say being a member didn’t really get me anywhere in my previous job but an unfortunate layoff
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I wonder how much he gets from the Big 3 to say this kind of BS!
The whole story in the business world is competition! Not monopolizing the market like the Big 3!
I wonder how much Mr. Coles pay for the phone bills. Maybe he gets a special discount!
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tax write-off
He could care less lol
unions are old school.. thus this is why he’s saying what he’s saying
as such, the old policy is old school
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No, he is right, it is a sellout of Canadian national interests and it is unfair to the other new entrants who played by the rules.
However, the fault lies with the encumbents. By ripping off consumers and holding back the development of the wireless industry in Canada, they made this necessary.
It’s a shame, because it would have been nice if we could have nurtured a strong Canadian wireless industry, but Rogers, Bell, and Telus made it impossible.
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Come on people… I’d love to save some money on my bill too, but this is the wrong way to go about it.
Create some competition without bending Canadian laws, designed to protect Canadian interests. Globallive has a parent company called Orascom which is huge. They have 15 times the Canadian population under subscription. They don’t need our money.
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I can sorta see both sides to this argument. And I, for one, actually agree with both sides. On the one hand, we are all incredibly upset that our cellular bills are far and away the highest in the WORLD. We need greater competition, and the CRTC was definitely not for this (in reading the rejection statements, I understood that the major reason for rejecting them was mainly that they owed Orascom a huge chunk of money for helping to get them started). So it was up to the government, who looked at the financial condition of the country and saw that people needed not only greater selection, but also better value.
On the other hand, look at our population and how thinly spread we are. Our big 3, as well as MTS and Sasktel, have a massive area to cover, but not nearly as many subscribers available to them as say the USA or anywhere in Europe or Asia. The infrastructure does cost quite a bit, and so I do understand having a larger bill to pay than some places in the world. I would say that while Wind Mobile coming in will help bring down prices, I would not be completely surprised if prices do not drop all that drastically… perhaps even simply gaining in value would be the best part of it all.
I will note… someone said something about roaming charges because one’s home would not have a tower from their carrier near their home? I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but there are no roaming charges typically within Canada… because Bell & Telus have a special roaming agreement between their companies, and Rogers has no one to roam with. A rogers device will not roam on the Telus / Bell HSPA network, nor will a Telus or Bell HSPA device roam on the Rogers / Fido network. Roaming only happens when you pick up a signal from a company that your service provider has a roaming agreement with, and even then, you have to be either very close to the border, or in the country that signal is broadcasting from.
A good way to stop roaming charges, though? Set your phone to “Home Only” mode… keeps it from ever looking for a different network to roam on.
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What an a*****e. I just want to email him and leave him a new one. He should be more worried getting billions back from the US government for our lumber and stop caring about telecom. Oh true that wont happen, he just gets paid by the US and the telecom giants to do f**k all. I hope this prick drops dead soon, because people like him need to learn to shut up. If he doesn’t want to drop dead, he should start paying for everyone thats been getting ripped out by Rogers, Bell and Telus for the past 18 years.
I hope once and for all Industry Canada can dismantle the CRTC already or take out the people that shouldn’t be in there.
So Dave Cole if you or any of your dimwits read this, SHUT THE FUCK UP!
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Wow! I am amazed how ignorant some of the people on this discussion board are. For the ones that leave commencts saying that the approval of Wind was illegal, please tell us where you obtained this information and what your credentials are. Are you a lawyer that has studied all the facts? Are you an accountant that has all of the information regarding Wind financials? Or are you just stating your opinion based on newspaper/website news stories?
Let me get this straight(and pardon my ignorance if I am incorrect), Industry Canada makes the foreign ownership rules, CRTC implements them. CRTC decides Wind does not meet Canadian content rules, Industry Canada, who made the rules, decides Wind is Canadian enough.
If Wind is truly out to get with higher prices in a few years(or bad service), people will just jump back to Bell, Telus, Rogers…Word will get out pretty quick that their service is not up to par.
So WTF is the problem! The 3 incumbants are not going anywhere.
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I’m not saying we should start dumping all the tea but if in fact those are the rules, so be it! What is wrong with this country? A government agency can put rules in place that can screw the rest of over and we’re supposed to take it? Canada is like the prison b!t@h of the world. We want better service. We told telus, bell, rogers that for years approx. 10 (can we go with that number) and they don’t deliver. Instead of being concerned with what we want, they know they’ve put us in a contract and so all they care about is how they can make more money. They’re all just mad because now they can’t make as much money as they used to by screwing people over. System access fee? They never scrapped it, they just replaced it with higher rates or a new government tax (see rogers).
Now the three incumbents will learn to play fair or they can pack it up.
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If anyone would care to e-mail Dave Coles and voice your opinion you can do so to dcoles@cep.ca
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