By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA — The House of Commons industry committee will convene to discuss Rogers’s pursuit of Shaw on January 25, a parliamentary staffer confirmed, in light of new facts and information that emerged from a month-long hearing at the Competition Tribunal that led to the competition court denying a petition to block the deal.
INDU, as the committee is called, will hold two meetings on that date for a total of four hours, the staffer said, which will include discussions about the main deal and the divestiture of Freedom Mobile.
The Globe and Mail, citing sources, reported Friday that a House committee would convene to discuss several issues related to the mega deal, including the process through which Rogers and Shaw chose Videotron as the suitor for Freedom, a proposed sale that was not in play when the committee completed its first review of the merger. The Globe reports that the committee expects to call witness from the companies involved, as well as the competition commissioner and the minister of Innovation Canada, who still must decide whether or not to approve the deal.
Globalive, which has offered to pay nearly a billion dollars more than Videotron for the wireless assets, has criticized the deal as secretive. Its chairman Anthony Lacavera said after the tribunal’s decision to deny the bureau’s challenge late last month that the result was a symptom of Canada’s outdated competition laws and reiterated the investment firm’s desire to purchase Freedom, whose predecessor Wind Mobile was owned by Globalive before it sold it to Shaw.
The committee hearing will come one day after the Federal Court of Appeal is scheduled to hear an appeal by the Competition Bureau against the tribunal’s decision. The bureau will argue that the tribunal did not analyze the case in its proper order and allowed allegedly uncertain commitments to influence the decision.
