TORONTO – Not surprisingly, Globalive chair and CEO Anthony Lacavera supports foreign investment in Canada’s telecom industry. But only under certain conditions, and only if “we can’t fund it in our own backyard.”
Lacavera, whose wireless company Wind Mobile has major investment from Egyptian-based Orascom Telecom, said Thursday that his company was forced to go abroad to seek capital is because “it was not available on Canadian soil to the extent required”.
“The (investment) pool is small and Bay Street is entrenched with the incumbents and their business interests”, Lacavera said during a speech to the Empire Club of Canada in Toronto. “Other new entrants will argue differently. But let’s remember that they did not seek financing to invest in enough spectrum to build a national lasting alternative to the incumbents. The $1 billion price tag required us to seek and obtain foreign capital if we wanted to actually compete in a national capacity.”
In order to create a globally competitive telecom industry that benefits consumers and fosters the development of Canadian content, Lacavera said Ottawa must loosen some of its foreign ownership regulations, permit access to foreign capital for telecommunications, and separate broadcasting content policy from telecommunications carriage.
“If we want full, real, telecom competition in Canada, we have to be able to fund it”, he continued. “If we’re serious about competition to provide greater benefits for Canadians then we have to allow the free market to work.”
