The Globe and Mail: Where are Bell's 'tangible benefits'?

For whom does Bell toll? The Canadian consumer, apparently. More details have emerged on Bell's avoidance of paying obligatory 'tangible benefits' in their takeover of Astral. These tangible benefits are intended to be a key source of funding for Canadian programming, helping to support Canadian Music Week and the hiring of new teachers at the National Theatre School.

Bell wants to use $40M of the tangible benefits they owe to fund expansion and modernization of their subsidiary NorthwesTel into Canada's North. Having unsuccessfully argued against paying into tangible benefits in their acquisition of CTV last year, let's hope that the CRTC catches onto their scheme.

Join us in urging a restructuring of Big Telecom by sharing our citizen-centered action plan with your MP at http://openmedia.ca/plan/action-plan.

Article by Simon Houpt for The Globe & Mail:

Do business people intentionally give really boring names to really important things so that regular folk won’t notice when they’re being screwed? For years, nobody outside the finance community cared about abstract investment tools like derivatives and mortgage-backed securities – until we all ended up on the edge of apocalypse. Smart people have told me that whenever they hear the term “regulatory framework,” their brains automatically toggle to something else to prevent a bout of narcolepsy.

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