Canada’s telecom titans come courting SaskTel

Rogers, Telus, Bell register to lobby as province mulls selling assets

All three of Canada’s major telecommunications companies have registered to lobby SaskTel officials.

According to the province’s lobbyist registry, two of those companies — Rogers Communications Inc. and Telus Corporation — listed SaskTel Minister Dustin Duncan as someone who is being lobbied by them.

Bell (BCE Inc.) listed in the registry at least three senior executives at SaskTel and lists its activities with those officials as “negotiations to sell to SaskTel or to purchase from SaskTel various telecom services, such as long distance, data and mobility rates.”

Details of the lobbying activity for Telus is described as, “Telecommunications and data storage and technology solutions. Pursue opportunities to contract with Government to provide information and communications technology solutions.”

The lobbyist doing that work is Teri Harris, who is a former member of Premier Brad Wall’s political inner circle.

She worked in the premier’s office from 2007 until 2014, when she left to become a strategist at Saskatoon-based Harris Greenaway Communications Ltd.

Rogers is being represented by Canadian Strategy Group’s Hal Danchilla, a longtime Albertabased conservative political insider.

The description of that lobbying activity says it was seeking insight and providing feedback “around future procurement opportunities on telecommunications storage solutions” and “encouraging the use of off-site data storage.”

Another lobbyist registered with Rogers is David Ekstrand, who is

vice-president of the Alberta and Midwest Region Enterprise Business Unit for Rogers. According to his LinkedIn profile, his responsibilities include growth and retention strategy and targets for Rogers’ customer base in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

He is also tasked with leading a team “to aggressively grow the Western Canadian marketplace.”

All three companies potentially have a vested interest in meeting with Duncan and SaskTel officials: The Sask. Party government recently passed a law, known as Bill 40, allowing it to sell up to 49 per cent of the Crown corporation.

SaskTel said in a statement the activity regarding the company is “in reference to day-to-day wholesale negotiations for each other’s services and this relationship has been occurring for years, which has no relevance to Bill 40.”

A spokesperson for the Premier’s office said in a statement that Minister Duncan “has not met with Bell, Telus or Rogers and there are no formal offers on the table for SaskTel” and that he has “literally not met — or even popped into a meeting with someone else from his office ... with any of the three companies mentioned.”

Duncan told reporters last week he met a representative from a “major” telecommunications company.