Nudge-nudge, wink-wink: wireless 'competition' in Canada

Late Note, first: After I wrote the following blog, the federal Minister of Industry absolutely gobsmacked me by reversing the CRTC decision preventing Globealive from becoming Canada's fourth major wireless competitor. How about them Conservatives? Let me see, the last time they got something this right was.....


Here's a belly-laugh for you, the first sentence on the CRTC's web site: The CRTC does not regulate the rates, quality of service or business practices of wireless service providers because the market for wireless services is sufficiently competitive.

Competitive, my petard!

The average Canadian pays something like 60% more for wireless service than US customers do, and even US customers pay a lot more than people in Europe and many, many third world countries.

In the US, you can get an unlimited data plan for an iPhone 3GS from AT&T for $30 a month. In Canada, it's $75 for 2 GB per month (with a 500 free weekday minutes plan – which any businessperson would exhaust in a couple of weeks, only to pay another $175 for the balance of the month PLUS long distance. AT&T offers an unlimited voice and unlimited long distance plan for just $99).

Funny, given all this competition that there is supposed to be in Canada, none of our big three wireless companies (Bell, Telus and Rogers) seem to be competing on price. Their wireless plans are all different, only same.

Which brings me to an upstart called Globealive. It's the brainchild of a young Central Canadian entrepreneur who saw that there is a great market in Canada for a price-competitive wireless company, found investment capital from a really rich Egyptian who runs successful, efficient, competitive wireless companies all over the world and used the money to win the auction for the last remaining significant share of the wireless band in Canada.

Anthony Lacavara then twiddled with the company's structure in an attempt to conform to CRTC rules about Canadian ownership of telecommunications. He arranged it so while the company may have been financed by an Egyptian, it was controlled by Canadians. The CRTC, nevertheless, ruled Globealive still contravened ownership regulations.

Now Telus, Bell and Rogers have appealed to Industry Minister Tony Clement not to accede to Globealive's application to overturn the CRTC ruling.

They're blowing all kinds of smoke in the direction of the flag, but anyone who's dealt with the biggies as a customer knows the real message – don't screw with the world's most profitable wireless industry; don't force us to respond to a lower-priced competitor. Bottom line: don't do anything to help Canadians pay lots less for wireless service.

The irony of this is unbelievable...all these proponents of free market competition using patriotism to shield their full intention to continue bleeding us of every dollar they can squeeze.

Tony Clement, when he decides, as I fully expect he will, that the CRTC decision will stand, will be the biggest hypocrite of all. The voice of the Conservatives' free market philosophy will kow-tow to mightiest and most influential of our free market business community, and in so doing will limit competition to the wink-wink, nudge-nudge crowd and indirectly cost average Canadians – whom the government is elected to protect – untold billions of dollars that could otherwise go to food, housing, education, shelter and the like.

I was eagerly awaiting Globealive's roll-out. I would have switched from Bell in a flash as would, I believe, hundreds of thousands of others.

Now, yet again, I and they wait for a Conservative hypocrite to make a decision, then spin it so what's black (political power used to limit competition and enhance corporate profit) looks white (protecting us from the evil foreigners).

The more I think about it, the more I wish I spoke Norwegian.

Hey, Stephen, Hey Ron...the pandemic was coming!

Anyone with a teenager in school, especially one actively involved in sport teams, knows the difficulty of getting both you and your kid to an immunization clinic – then waiting four hours.

Given that teens are one of the prime targets for H1N1, I can't help but wonder why there isn't a busload of nurses pulling up to city high schools and running clinics in gyms.

Heaven knows, there is no nursing shortage – Stephen Duckett said so in one of his first news releases.

Presumably it was the same release in which he froze hiring and promised that service from Alberta Health would only get better...all of this about the same time the coming pandemic was becoming more and more imminent.

Duh!

And then there was Ron Liepert on Day One, figuratively standing in a deep pile of public anger doo-doo, proudly congratulating Alberta Health for accomplishing 38,000 immunizations on the first day.

Lemme see. If just half the population wants to be immunized, and they can do 38,000 a day, that's...46 days later they could tell us it's done. Oh, wait, there's a 14-day period before the shot takes effect, so make that 60 days (Boxing Day, folks!) before half the population is immune.

Right, Ron.

Good work!

Don't forget to issue a few news releases telling us how lucky we are to have you.

Looking outward can be profitable!

Interesting article in the Calgary Herald October 25/09. In its midst, three amazing facts.

The UK charges the oil industry a tax of 70% on old oil production, and 50% on newer wells. Norway charges 70%.

Vue Weekly has reported that the Pembina Institute said that in 2004, Alaska charged $11.60 per barrel oil royalty, and Norway charged $14.10 per barrel. Alberta charged $4.30 per barrel.

Kinda gives you a new perspective on all the complaints wailing out of Calgary's downtown high country about Alberta's royalty regime.

I recall a couple of years back when then Liberal Leader Kevin Taft said that if Alberta had charged the industry the same rates as the industry had been paying in Texas, between 2000 and 2006, we would have received $16+ billion in EXTRA oil revenues.

Wow. Wouldn't that $16 billion have come in handy right about now?

Forget the rats - we're all lemmings!

The Conservatives have now officially blown two oil booms.

Norway (population 4.4 million) started its Heritage Fund with an initial $400 million oil-revenue investment in 1996, and today the fund not only sits at CDN$429 billion, but it's projected to reach $800 billion within 10 years.

Just for magnitude's sake, $800 billion is a stack of $100 bills 1040 kilometres high. If you spent just over $1000 a second, 24/7, it would take you 25 years to blow it all.

Alberta started its Heritage Fund in 1976 with an initial $1.5 billion kick-off. After two oil booms and 33 years – 20 more years than the Norwegians have been at it – we've got all of $17 billion.

Lemmings stampede over the cliff only once every few years. Albertans have been doing it consistently for 38 years.

In any other jurisdiction, the people would be demonstrating in the streets and pounding on the doors of the Legislature to vent their fury over such financial incompetence. But, hey, this is Alberta we're talkin' 'bout here, pardner! They're the gover-mint 'n they bin the gover-mint since whenever, so they must know what they're doin'!

We MUST lose the mentality that equates (supposedly Progressive) Conservatism with the essence of Albertanism.

There's no other way to prove to the rest of the world that we're not just collectively very stupid.

Alberta Health: shades of George W & Dick

After years of provincial handwringing about nurse, physician and medical technician shortages, how on earth can our newbie, whiz-bang import Mr. Ducket think we believe that he’ll offer buyouts only to people in the health system whose disappearance will have no effect on patient care?

Do the numbers – to achieve $300 million in savings means, at the very least, 3,000 fewer staff. No effect on patient care, Mr. Duckett? Ri-i-i-i-ght. Duckett truly must think we are Neanderthals, because he brazenly upped the PR ante by claiming that his cuts will actually improve patient care.

Maybe he’s right. After all, this is the guy who made a critical, province-wide nursing shortage go poof! with a news release and a hiring freeze.

Normally, we’d trust in political leaders to see through bafflegab the like of which Mr. Duckett and his spin doctors have spewed, and rein them in.

But wait, his boss is a tough-talkin’, high school diploma kinda guy who knows where he’s goin’, aims to git there – damn the torpedoes! – so he hired a gunslinger with a whole bunch of letters after his name to help him git there. He’s up there in the owner’s box, cheering Duckett on.

The whole thing reminds me of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, whose ideological deafness to enormous choruses of reason from a complete cross-section of the electorate left the US and the rest of world in one holy-doodle of a pickle.

Alberta’s health care system is in ‘bick’ trouble.

One more time, Lord?

The way the provincial government ‘managed’ things during its second crack at an oil boom makes me wonder if someday I’ll have a bumper sticker that says ‘O Lord, give us oil boom #3, and we promise not to piss this one away!’

Credit is now a social utility - so regulate the bastards!

This could be either a short blog or a real long one. But I feel a rant coming on about the credit card companies and how they rape us with the blessing of governments who believe that, God Forbid!, government has no place in telling the marketplace what it can and can't do.

Credit card companies have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in making credit and bank cards ubiquitous, so much a part of everyday life that they can't be gone without. In 2007, they spent $19 billion in North America alone to market themselves. Their marketing works. These are very serious people!

I'm all for government staying out of the marketplace, as long as the product we're talking about isn't essential to life. When it's just a choice about whether or not you want a widget in your life, why should we get in the way of the competitive marketplace's ability to create, distribute, price and market various brands of widgets...as long as the widget isn't something like health care, clean drinking water, electricity, natural gas or...here it comes!...bank and credit cards.

These days you simply have to have a card or you can't rent a car, reserve a hotel, fly anywhere, buy things on the internet or, sometimes and quite ironically, prove your identity when you write a cheque.

I believe in tight regulation of mass utilities like gas, electricity, water and the like. You can short circuit arguments about pros and cons of government regulation versus the free market by looking at the not-so-long-ago privatization of electricity in Alberta. Within a few short years, the price had shot from 3 cents per kwh to something like 11 cents. And remember, the electricity producers made money at 3 cents!

Back to credit cards, though. Now that the companies have succeeded in making the posession of a credit card a necessity, the whole business is, in my mind, now a social utility and worthy of very tight federal government regulation.

• Interest rates should be capped.
• The fees that credit card companies charge businesses (currently 2% and more, an amount that gets added by the business right back into its prices, which affects everyone including those who pay cash) should be hammered back down to the 0.33% level charged by federally-regulated Australian credit card companies. (Just think about that...the Aussie credit card companies still make money charging businesses 600% less than our credit card companies do!)
• Credit card companies shouldn't be allowed to contractually prevent business owners from giving a rebate to customers who buy with cash.
• And fine-print-based, bait-and-switch promotions that suck customers into paying oodles more interest penalties on outstanding balances should be outlawed.

Regulate the suckers!

What the hell is government for, except to serve and protect the people?

The basic problem here is that current politicians (Conservatives all!) pay lip service to serving the people, but when they act, they do so to protect people...in business.

It won't grow if they don't know.

Recently, the Globe and Mail, Canada's Torontocentric newspaper, did a great article about how kids these days just aren't interested in studying science beyond high school because careers in science are not attractive to them. The article mentioned many reasons, among them that there are 'sexier' occupations to aspire to in the IT world, that research funding is iffy, and a few others.

One thing the article skipped (I wonder why?) has to do with the massive downsizing that newsrooms across Canada have suffered in recent years. I'm not talking about radio station or most TV newsrooms...they've always been second-rate, staffed as they are with Kens and Barbies who don't know what a real story is unless someone else tells them (a PR person's dream). I'm talking about the major market newspapers.

I recently had a very enlightening talk with a man who spent more than 20 years reporting (very well, I must say) for a major Western Canadian newspaper and who thankfully took a buy-out a couple of years ago. He told me his old newsroom is a shadow of its former self after massive budget cuts. In proportion to its city's population growth, the newsroom has about half the reporting staff today as it had when he began his career. He told me that 'beats' that used to have two or more people assigned now have just one reporter, and that the assigned reporters are pulled away constantly to handle the latest sensational police & fire-type emergencies. They just don't have time to develop contacts and investigate what their contacts tell them, either on or off the record.

In my day (more than 30 years ago), The Edmonton Journal assigned me to a medical beat that included a hefty time commitment to pure medical research as opposed to the politics of medicine which at the time were comparatively tepid. This was decades before Edmonton developed its true muscle in medical research, when the field was just finding itself. The paper saw the possibilities, however, and dedicated the nearly-full time of one of its (many at the time) reporters to share with the community what was happening, primarily in the labs at the University of Alberta.

The newspaper's vision and my subsequent efforts resulted in many interesting stories about research and the people conducting it. Among the most memorable to me was the world-leading transplant immunology research being done by Dr. John Dossitor. His discoveries about the 'mechanics' of tissue rejection set the stage for huge leaps in organ transplantation.

So, back to my main point.

Kids these days, and those parents involved enough with their kids' lives to be positive influences on their career choices, are media-smart. If the information is out there, they'll find it, whether it's in print or on the web. But because of the huge cutbacks in major newsroom staffing levels, no one is out there digging to find the great stories that must be happening every day in the worlds of scientific research. The result is that their world is not being provided with the information about, and the excitement in, scientific research to stimulate their imaginations.

No information, no interest.

No interest, fewer new scientists.

Fewer scientists, less government commitment to funding.

Less funding, less research 'action'

Less action, even less reason for media interest in research.

It's a vortex, and I fear this one is headed down the drain.

A smarter way to retire

We have this big – and now, unfortunately, growing yet again – National Debt. We're collectively getting older and many people, though not nearly enough, are saving for their retirement through RRSPs. It seems to me that, with some creative thinking, we could do something that would help a whole lot on both issues.

The change in the near term would be to grandfather all RRSPs to date, and start a new RRSP system. We would do away with income tax deductions for RRSP contributions, requiring contributions to be made with money that had already been taxed. The next point is critically important to my proposition: The tax the feds get on RRSP contributions would go straight to national debt paydown.

Heresy, you say? Not at all, because at the other end when the RRSP is withdrawn, the federal government would NOT tax withdrawals, or the growth the RRSP had produced.

In 2007, Canadians contributed $34.1 billion to their RRSPs (regrettably,only 6% of the actual contribution 'room' they had). Figure the average marginal tax rate at 22%, and under a new regime, the additional tax revenue available for debt paydown under this new regime would have been $7.5 billion. With that amount applied directly to national debt, in the following year, we would have paid about $450 million less in debt interest than we did. In 2009, we'd save $450 from 2008's paydown, PLUS yet another $450+ million 2007's paydown. And so on...

A more quickly disappearing national debt would free up progressively more more of our taxes to actually be used for the delivery of government programs instead of debt interest and principal payments. The overall effect would be to reduce, or keep the lid on, tax rates over the balance of our earning years. (As the debt goes down in progressively larger chunks over the years, perhaps our leaders could decide to spend some of the interest savings either on enhanced programs for increasing numbers of seniors, or at least to stop the erosion of such programs!) They could also decide to actually reduce personal income tax rates.

The new system would also guarantee that if future governments do, God forbid!, raise taxes to spend even more than the interest savings, those increased taxes will not be applied to any of our future retirement income deriving from RRSP contributions under the new system.

Think of it as an insurance policy against politicians!

Obviously, the government would have to maintain the current system for all pre-existing RRSP contributions.

But wait...there's more!

I'm a strategic communication consultant. Under the new regime, I can also make a case for the feds to spend an enormous amount of money over several years on a marketing campaign to convince more of us to contribute, and to contribute larger amounts, to our RRSPs. Achieving a total shift in national attitude toward retirement saving would perhaps cost a couple of billion dollars over a decade or so. In magnitude, the campaign would have to be be akin to the WWII effort to convince people to buy war bonds.

But just for a moment, imagine that today we were contributing an average of, say, 50% of the RRSP room we already have, instead of just 6%. In 2007, that would have produced $284.2 Billion in contributions. At even the lowest marginal tax rate of 15%, under a new RRSP regime the federal government would have collected an extra $42.6 Billion in income tax in 2007 and applied it all to paying down the national debt, saving us something like $2.6 Billion in 2008 interest payments.

The interest savings over the years would be additive (using the same figures for simplicity, in 2009 we would again save the original $2.6 Billion from the 2007 paydown, plus $2.6+ Billion from the 2008 paydown, for a total interest saving exceeding $5.2 Billion). And so on. At that rate, we'd pay off the net national debt in 10 or 12 years! Imagine...without a national debt we'd have $42 billion extra to spend every year – $1200 for every single citizen – without raising taxes.

One other aspect of achieving a 50%-of-room RRSP level would be a massive infusion – close to a third of a trillion dollars every year – of extra investment capital into the economy. Assuming that RRSP contributions were left ‘at work’ in the economy, after just 10 years, we’d have $3 trillion fueling the economy that we don’t have now. Not bad when you consider that our entire current GDP (2007) is just over $1.2 trillion. All that investment capital would produce a real whack of increased federal income taxes – with which we could pay the debt down even faster.

So undertaking a long-term attitude-shift marketing campaign with sufficient strength to motivate a change of RRSP contribution behaviour would pay for itself many, many times over. If there was a new RRSP regime, and the marketing campaign succeeded, it would likely be the second-wisest investment ever made by the government of Canada, outclassed only by the decision to build the CPR.

Sometimes I wish you could explain stuff like this in 20 seconds or less.

Pity the English language (3)

Yep, there are less calories in whatever it is, and supposedly intelligent people spend millions telling us so.

What we need are fewer examples like this.

Pity the English language (2)

I'm obliged to say that I'm not obligated.

Hard hearts on the right

I just read a column by Alberta's Rush Limbaugh, Lorne Gunter, which he led off with:

"The CBC will never be able to exorcise its left-wing missionary zeal — for global warming, for Islam, for big government, Barack Obama, multiculturalism, public health care, human rights commissions and so on."

Unbelievable hypocrisy! The fact that someone feels secure saying that because a media entity pays attention to issues & people like those he lists makes that entity politically-biased is a clear indication to me of how successful the right wing (from Washington all the way to little-'ol-Edmonton) has been at brainwashing the public.

It's OK for him to paint the CBC as biased for dealing with those issues, but it's also OK for him and others of his ilk (Fox News and Macleans are a good start) to hammer, and hammer, and hammer away at the very same subjects, consistently twisting the facts in their promotion of the ideology of the right. Short form: its fine to be biased these days if you're biased against what they call 'the left'...which is generally a large group of people who have social consciences, balance, and a belief that enlightened government can be a very good thing.

It's fine in my book to have a different opinion, but I am disheartened with the meanness, the arrogance and the dishonesty of far-right commentators. They remind me of very scary TV evangelists: "Surrender to me all your thoughts, your compassion and your reason and I will deliver you unto the perfect world, in which taxes will be near zero, 'good people' will tell 'bad people' how to live, jails will be full, you'll be as free as possible to fight everyone for a bigger slice of whatever you want and along the way you won't have to pay for all those losers." I am amazed that the pervasiveness of their thinking – the result of the Regan-Mulroney years and, in Canada, still being fed by the Harper gang – has won them the magnitude of the forums they enjoy.

Paula Simons, thanks for your balance, and for The Journal's in giving you a forum.

Jackie Flanagan, thanks for your courage...and in Calgary, no less!

Linda Goyette, you were ahead of your time. Let's hope there really is a pendulum!

When the time comes, I don't want to retire into Lorne Gunter's idea of society. I'd like to think that, instead, I and others like me were actually able to make Alberta and Canada better places to live, places where good-hearted debate, compassionate thinking, emotional and artistic expression are respected at society's very core, and not ridiculed before millions by people with narrow vision, hard hearts and mean minds.

Flagpoles and death

Even the Ultimate Protector of the English language, the BBC, has fallen away from the proper use of the term to describe a flag which has been lowered in honour of a fallen soldier or 'important person'.

Everyone these days uses the term 'flying at half-mast'.

In fact, that term is only correct when the flag is on board a ship, where masts are used to fly flags.

On land, flags fly from flagstaffs, so the correct term is 'half-staff'.

(Curmudgeonly yours, I remain ever vigilant....)

Pity the English language (1)

How ever did the word 'orientated' creep into our language?

What was wrong with 'oriented'?

Brainwashing from the right

I actually remember a time when government – the civil service, that is – was respected, a time when civil servants were seen as dedicated, intelligent people who managed important things on our behalf, who provided information and advice to politicians, and who then diligently carried out political decisions. Government was seen as a positive thing, the most important outward sign that as a society, we were maturing, consistently improving the quality of life both for ourselves and for those who needed a leg up.

But after two decades of pounding from the right, government has somehow become a sign of stupidity and waste: 'We need relief from taxes!' 'No new taxes!' 'How can sane people support the bloat that government represents?' 'The private sector can always do better!'

The right wing has spent many years quite successfully planting in our collective minds the concept that taxes are bad. Any tax, all tax, they would have us think, merely supports the fat paycheques, fat benefits and fat retirements of idiot civil servants. What the hell do they know, anyway?

Small government, says the right, is the only good government. Leave tax money in the hands of the people and everyone will profit from the wealth it creates.

When you acknowledge the right's manipulation of the public mind against the concept that taxes are an INVESTMENT in a better society and that government means, and can actually do, well, you become acutely aware of how easy it is these days for the right wing politicians, and especially for the media, to make statements based on the underlying assumption that taxes are bad, and that government is a waste of taxes. It's just assumed by those people that that's what everyone thinks....it's a self-perpetuating operating reality.

Well, I'm a fan of everything from pothole-less streets to clean air, highly competent teachers and flood aversion plans. I like the idea that independent safety inspectors make sure workers are safe and the work they're doing poses no public danger. I don't buy the pitch that refineries, petrochemical companies and other major industries like pulp mills are capable of policing their own environmental compliance. I like integrated, multi-jurisdictional transportation planning.

Those things are what government's for. They're really important. And so, therefore, is paying taxes.

What my province, my country and the rest of North America needs is a change of attitude toward respect for the rightful place of government, and all the services it provides, in a civil, enlightened society.

Let's agree once again that paying taxes is an investment. We can demand efficiency from our civil service, but let's start celebrating what they do for us, and stop resenting every penny it costs.

Poor Tim!

OK, I really wanted to save my first post for something a little more than this, but what the heck:

Poor Tim Geithner. He's charged with conceiving and executing a strategy to prevent a global economic catastrophe of unparalleled proportions, but it seems all we hear of him these days concerns his part-or-no-part in $165 million worth of AIG bonuses.

Here we are again, victims of our addiction to sensationalism, and the media's addiction to stoking and feeding our addiction.

Even if Geithner personally considered the bonuses and made the call, the amount of money involved is less than 1/10,000th of the magnitude of the package that he and Obama have so far come up with...to avert the catastrophe!

The bonuses were wrong-headed, but they are not the story that will affect our financial future. If Geithner goofed, so be it. Given the Big Picture he is dealing with, I can forgive him the goof. And so should all news editors, and their Kens and Barbies who are feeding us this never-ending, ET-style hype.

The Neighbourhood Critic says hello!

I'm Alex Macdonald, and my neighbourhoods include Canada, Alberta, and Edmonton.

I'm an ex-newspaper-journalist, an ex-government PR type (culture, recreation), a sometimes pro photographer, an experienced political strategist at both civic and provincial levels, and mostly these days a strategic communications consultant to organizations I respect, including construction unions, whose thinking these days would amaze anyone with old-time union stereotypes in their head-RAM.

I'm fascinated by the positives & negatives of the Alberta Oil Boom and how we Albertans just can't seem to get the 'managing wealth' thing right. Most people would love our problems, but when you're us, believe me, they're problems!

I'm amazed at how sheep-like Albertans are about Alberta. I'm amazed that people here (anywhere, for that matter) don't have a clue how big a Billion actually is!

Every time I hear the radio news, I am also amazed that they let some of those people write, because they can't.

I'm still awaiting the arrival of a Canadian politician at any level who is capable of 'spiritual' politics, that being the ability to tap into the spirit of the people, add ideas and hope and creativity and encouragement and energy, then beam it back to the people in words they actually get and act upon. From that perspective, I'm jealous of both the Americans and the people of Newfoundland & Laborador.

There are some things I'm happy with, like how my city is being run, how people where I live are into recycling, the coming of larger-scale alternative energy, and TV shows like Damages that don't assume I'm stupid.

This blog will take some time to develop, so please come back.

Drop a comment if you're motivated.

Let's see what happens.