OTTAWA – A coalition of consumer advocacy groups is petitioning the federal cabinet to overturn the CRTC’s approval to raise payphone rates from 25 to 50 cents per local call.
The groups cite a public opinion poll of more than 1,000 Canadians conducted for the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) in July showing that 75% of respondents agreed that 50 cents was too much to pay for a local payphone call.
The petition calls for the cabinet to overturn the rate hike, announced as part of the CRTC’s new price cap regime, and send the matter back to the commission with directions to consider the effects of the rate hike on all telephone users, especially low-income Canadians.
“The CRTC seems to have focused completely on the phone companies’ view of payphones as just another market,” said John Lawford, counsel for PIAC. “It’s not. Payphones are a lifeline for Canadians and especially low-income Canadians who don’t have a home phone. They are the least able to afford an increase and here the CRTC has let phone companies double their rates overnight. It was ill-considered and we are asking the government to step in and say that is unfair.”
The coalition says the commission approved the hikes because it feared that without higher revenues, Bell Canada, Bell Aliant, Telus, MTS Allstream, and Sasktel would remove “unprofitable” payphones.
The coalition wants payphone rates to be subsidized by residential and business rates. “The CRTC is effectively placing the entire cost of payphones—an important part of the entire telephone and a social service—upon the backs of payphone users alone,” said Michael Janigan, a lawyer for PIAC and the National Anti-Poverty Organization, another group in the coalition. “As we note in the petition, payphones are part of the entire telephone network, so some support for their costs should come from general residential and business rates.”
The Union des consommateurs, the third group in the coalition, says the CRTC does not require phone companies to maintain the payphones they do have in operation, in exchange for raising the rates.
