We need the whole story on wireless

Re Inside the battle for Canada’s airwaves, Aug. 17

The article by Bruce Campion-Smith and Les Whittington was the most comprehensive I’ve seen yet on the subject. However, nowhere have I seen any mention of NAFTA’s potential effect on allowing Verizon to enter the Canadian marketplace. Ordinary Canadians hear little about NAFTA these days, despite its quietly affecting much of our lives. Once a U.S. company gets a toe-hold, it seems, Canada is not allowed to say, “No” to any others in the same business. NAFTA gives companies the “right to profit” by letting them sue governments for environmental, public health or other public policies they don’t like. I think of it as a ratchet — you can go further in that direction but never go backward. Do we really want to open the door to American wireless companies, realizing that their size is bound to overwhelm our homegrown ones eventually? A Star editorial told us Verizon is “one of the highest-cost carriers in the U.S. and ranks near the bottom in customer satisfaction.” And MP Glenn Thibeault said, “there is absolutely no guarantee that Verizon . . . (will) give us better customer service and lower prices” in the longer run. We cannot be all eager for more competition without having the whole story.

Ann Brokenshire, Oshawa

This issue of competition in the wireless industry is part of a much bigger issue: For Canada to compete in a global economy, Canadians must be able to buy our needs at global prices.

We have oligarchs getting rich engaging in cartel pricing, then others then getting rich exporting our jobs to lower-cost jurisdictions unencumbered by these cartels, and tens of billions of Canadian dollars being deposited every year into offshore bank accounts to avoid paying their membership costs to our society.

People who live on a dollar per day in Third World countries can still afford a cellphone, which speaks to the extent of the price gouging taking place in this industry against Canadians.

And certainly this is not the only industry where this is happening. Hugh Allin, Newcastle