The situation in Quebec is slightly better thanks to a 4th telecom company, Videotron, which brings mobile plans and internet prices lower than in the rest of Canada.
It's funny how sometimes you'll see the exactly same "promotion" offerings from the Robelus trio...
Saskatchewan also sees better prices and promotions due to the presence of Province-owned SaskTel iirc.
Edit: also, the three major carriers (Rogers, Telus, Bell) generally offer different packages in SK than they do for the rest of the country, to remain competitive with SaskTel. Another fun thing: while Rogers has some towers in the province, the LTE towers are all generally owned by SaskTel and there’s an agreement in place to let the other use them. In exchange, SaskTel customers get to use Bell and Telus towers in the rest of the country without incurring roaming charges. That used to not be the case and we’d be limited to 250MB of data out of province.
More than telecommunications, it’s irritating how much of cable and network TV is owned by these companies, with lucrative US licensing and distribution rights for many properties so they can sell you a four-way bundle of home phone, cell phone, TV and Internet. So few companies can offer all of the above, and while it’s nice that we’ve CRTC-mandated limited competitive sharing to a limited extent on Internet lines, for everything else the CRTC is incredibly anti-consumer, only going after the worst behaviour when it’s been happening for a decade as “normal”.
An example? Cheese. Under CETA (the Canada-EU free trade agreement), only Canadian dairy producers can import cheese from the EU into Canada. These producers will set its price artificially high as to match the price of Canadian cheese plus a premium. This way, they ensure consumers will buy Canadian cheese instead, as it appears to be cheaper.
It's just crazy how much lobbying can do.
Should Canadians pay a bit of a premium to be able to supply some of the things that we depend on to live ourselves, in our own way, on our own terms? For food I think yes. I am happy to know that the milk and cheese I consume did not come from American mega farms with all their problems.
Sure, but how much is this subsidized from general US tax revenues?
I'm actually one of the people who don't have much of a problem with Canada's dairy (and poultry) regime, with its supply-side management:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_management_(Canada)
The fact of the matter is that just about everyone (US, EU) subsidies their farmers from general tax revenue. The US supposedly gives as much in subsidies as the entire Canadian market.
If Canada were to open its market to foreign product, Canadian farmers would probably be wiped out because of cheaper imports. So if Canada would want a domestic industry, they too would also have do subsidize their own farmers--and that would be done from general tax receipts.
So the taxes of someone who is lactose intolerant would be going to help produce milk. Someone who is vegan / vegetarian would be helping to grow chickens.
With the current system, the only people paying more are the folks who actually by the product(s).
I moved back to Quebec a month ago and was doing a survey of the mobile plans: Videotron, Bell, Rogers, Telus, Virgin Mobile, Koodo, Fido and Fizz. It was hilarious, 6/8 companies had the exact same 4 + 5GB for 55$ deal.
In the past, every single graph of pricing I've seen shows them all moving together in lock step. It's unbelievable to me that after all these years nothing has been done to solve this. Here's hoping this election this will get more attention from the politicians...
Tons of ways to Paris. Not so for Vancouver.
And both AC and WestJet were heavily invested in developing a 737MAX fleet...
Canadian airport usage is supported through user taxes rather than general revenue.
There are some startups now in Canada offering lower fares but it's not that much cheaper and they frequently fly to international destinations, which are more lucrative anyhow.
Canada has 33MM people with like 8 airports spread out across the size of continental europe (700MM+ people)
With ISPs, the CRTC (~FCC) has at least forced the incumbent telcos so allow independents access to their Layer 1:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-access_network
I think the US would benefit from such a policy, and it did exist for a short spell around 2000.
Doesn't help much in the area of mobile phones though.
With regards to air transportation, I would think that most traffic flows more north-south and less east-west, so I'm not sure how many airlines can survive given Canada's population and the distribution thereof. Certainly we do have some 'regionals', Porter out of CYTZ being fairly well-known.
The comment I wanted to make there is the main reason why Rogers signed that agreement was they got unused Toronto spectrum licenses from Videotron.
The big 3 are monsters, but the set-asides that the government does in spectrum auctions imo does more damage in making spectrum more expensive than it does in supporting anyone not named Rogers/Bell/Telus.
[1] https://www.google.ca/amp/s/globalnews.ca/news/5149144/bc-in...
[unAMPed link] https://globalnews.ca/news/5149144/bc-inter-provincial-liquo...