OTTAWA – Documents newly made public today at the Competition Tribunal’s hearing into the Competition Bureau’s application to block the proposed merger of Rogers Communications and Shaw Communications reveals Telus’ strategy to stop and delay the deal.
The document, prepared for Telus’ board on the company’s second quarter of 2022, says Telus continued to execute its “top-of-house strategy” where its executive leadership team met “with political leaders to kill, shape and slow the deal.”
Additionally, the document notes that during the quarter, “NDP leader, Jagmeet Singh, repeatedly asked PM Trudeau during Question Period to block the merger, using TELUS talking points” and indicates Telus was in “negotiations with potential divestiture buyers of (Shaw’s) Freedom Mobile.”
A slide deck containing a Q2 2022 board update further highlights Telus’ plan to “leverage the Rogers outage”. It explains Telus wrote the Competition Bureau “to reiterate the security risks resulting from the elimination of redundancy; updated public opinion polling to leverage with UCP; engaged in direct advocacy with ISED about the importance of network diversity and influenced invitation lists to House committee hearing on the outage.”
A third document outlining ideas from a Telus executive shows the company was thinking about how it could “Mobilize western alienation activists and seed information with those groups that this is a bad deal for western Canada which will lead to layoffs declining investment, etc. in the long-term.”
Other things contemplated according to the document include how Telus could “kill this deal without making it about competition”, and whether they could “attempt to drive a review of the competition act in the middle of the review”.
The information revealed today during the hearing is thanks in part to a renewed effort by the tribunal to ensure the public can follow what is going on throughout it.
Chief Justice Paul Crampton, who is heading the tribunal panel hearing the case, started the day off by addressing the fact a lot of time was spent last week in camera and witness statements were not made available to the public ahead of time. (A recent article in The Globe and Mail highlighted the frustration of several observers trying to follow the hearings as members of the public.)
“There’s a lot of very competitively sensitive information in the witness statements and in the testimony that we have been hearing from the witnesses and it’s important to ensure that this information is not publicly disclosed as this in and of itself could harm competition,” the chief justice explained, while also noting there are still ways for them to limit how often they go in camera.
“On behalf of the tribunal I also intend to be more vigilant in ensuring we only remain in camera for as long as is truly necessary,” he said. “I would request everyone’s assistance and understanding in that regard. We all need to keep in mind that there’s a high level of interest in this hearing and that people need to be able to follow and better understand what we’re doing.”
Chief Justice Crampton further asked counsel to confirm their intent to call witnesses on the list 24 hours in advance of when they are due to testify testimony so they can post their witness statements on the tribunal’s website before they appear.
“I’ll simply add that in reviewing statements of some of the witnesses that are scheduled to appear this week… I noticed there’s been some overuse of confidential A and confidential B designations, especially in the expert reports,” said the chief justice.
Today, the judge decided certain documents from Telus were not confidential even though they were labeled as such, which Telus objected to.
Chief Justice Crampton, however, said “at the end of the day it’s up to the tribunal to determine whether a document needs to keep a confidential level A designation.”
Timing is playing a big role in how the chief justice decided to proceed on the matter of confidentiality.
“We have a very time-sensitive transaction – you’ve heard why it’s time sensitive, you’ve heard what the consequences are going to be if this hearing isn’t completed before Christmas and if a decision isn’t issued before certain dates. So, we don’t have the time for counsel to be suspending the hearings and seeking instructions. I’m going to have to make a decision and, in each case, based on my experience in this area. That’s why we have an expert panel.”
The hearing continues tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. For instructions on how to watch online, please click here.
