How many billions did Harper’s Globealive decision cost taxpayers?

The CRTC ruled that Globealive did not meet the test for being a Canadian controlled company, which would have precluded its entry as a fourth national telecom competitor.

In his usual whimsical and wholly arbitrary fashion, Stephen Harper decided that he would overrule the CRTC's decison and let Globealive proceed to launch its service anyway. Globealive hired a former senior advisor to Harper
to make their case for them.

Money talks. Harper complies. Taxpayers lose.

So now we have a company that enters the Canadian telecom market after being the winning bidder in an auction in which all bidders had to meet strict Canadian ownership rules. Globealive won that bid, except they did not meet the tests that had been laid down to compete for the license, and it turns out that they aren’t Canadian after all.

So here’s the point. A constraint was placed on who could bid for this license, namely you had to be Canadian. That constraint, meant there were fewer bidders than otherwise. Many deep pocketed foreign companies were precluded from bidding, lessening the amount of money that would have been raised under this competitive auction process. We are talking about billions of dollars here folks, but due to Harper’s skewed auction we will never actually know for sure.

The final upshot of Harper’s completely flawed process of the auction itself and his whimsical rewriting of the rules after the fact, means that we have a foreign entity who has entered our market at a price that is not at all reflective of what taxpayers would have received for this immensely valuable wireless spectrum, had all foreigners been allowed to bid in the first place.

This is insane. And to think that people still go around calling Harper a trained economist. More like a trained seal, if you ask me, where money and lobbyists are able to get Harper to do anything they please, notwithstanding how negative the consequences of those decisions are on taxpayers at larger. Just look what Paul Desmarais Jr. was able to get Harper to do on income trusts:

Kill Desmarais’ competition for Canadians’ retirement savings dollars, namely income trusts even if it meant destroying $35 billion of Canadian hard earned retirement savings and the wholesale foreign takeover of Canadian companies at a cost to taxpayers of over $7 billion a year, once all is said and done.

That’s the price of having a trained seal for a Prime Minister.

Simple solutions to deal with Harper's screw-up:

This adverse situation and loss of taxpayer dollars that Harper has created is not too late to remedy as there are many solutions to avoid Canada and taxpayers from being taken advantage of.

First, enforce upon Globealive the requirement that they meet the test of being Canadian. Failure to do so will result in a stiff fine or forfeiture of the deposit they made when they first registered to bid for a license. The spectrum would then be put up for re-auction, depending upon what was considered the optimal outcome for taxpayers under the circumstances.

Alternatively, reopen the auction that Globealive won, on the false pretenses of its being Canadian, by requiring Globealive to honor its bid on the terms of its current non-Canadians ownership structure and allow others with similar foreign structures to compete for the license that Globealive won at prices equal to or greater than what Globealive bid. Globealive would be permitted to increase its bid in the face of higher bids from others, such that Globealive could end up as the winner, except however taxpayers would have received full value for this wireless spectrum and the "cost" associated with allowing foreigners like Globealive into our market. Something which our trained seal Prime Minister's blind eye, wink wink, nudge nudge, solution did not.