It’s been barely a week since Prime Minister Trudeau’s new cabinet was sworn in and Canada’s telecom giants are already asking them to overturn a recent CRTC decision that made internet access cheaper for Canadians.

In August, the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission announced it was lowering the rates that smaller, independent internet service providers (ISPs) pay for access to the larger providers’ networks. Right now about 1-in-10 residential internet users and nearly 1-in-4 businesses buy internet access from small ISPs, who pay to use telephone wires or cable owned by companies like Bell and Rogers to reach their customers.

After the CRTC’s decision, customers and small ISPs alike celebrated the move. Although Canadians pay some of the highest prices in the world for our internet services, the lower rates went a long way to help promote competition and affordability in Canada’s dysfunctional telecom market.

The revised rates also showed that incumbent providers like Bell, Telus and Rogers had been grossly overcharging smaller internet companies for years, and the CRTC forced the incumbents to repay small ISPs retroactively.

Practically overnight, providers like TekSavvy, Distributel, Start.ca, and Oricom passed the savings on to their customers. They lowered rates, increased speeds and made promises to increase investment in underserved areas.

Predictably, Big Telecom greeted the decision with appeals to the CRTC, and five cable companies (not including Telus) jointly filed to the Federal Court of Appeal. Bell even threatened to cut rural investment and withhold connectivity from 200,000 homes, with other telecom giants following suit.

And then, as though the simultaneous appeals and coordinated public relations efforts weren’t enough, Bell, Telus, Rogers and other telecoms asked the federal cabinet to overturn the CRTC’s decision, invoking a rarely used parliamentary procedure known as a “petition to the Governor in Council,” asking cabinet to intervene.

This appeal to cabinet is particularly problematic for a few reasons.

First, the CRTC used a complex costing analysis to justify lowering the rates. This isn’t a matter of policy on which cabinet can simply change course. It’s highly complicated, technical math. And overturning the CRTC’s math for political reasons would undermine the ability for the Commission to exercise its expertise and maintain its independence as an arms-length regulator.

Second, the issue is already before the courts. At best, Big Telecom’s request is unnecessarily duplicative. At worst, cabinet meddling in the decision would be perceived as undermining an ongoing judicial process.

Third, it’s been proven to be a bad tactic. The last time that Big Telecom appealed to cabinet was in 2015, after they were forced to provide small providers network access for ultra high-speed fibre internet services. They lost. It was a common sense decision: Canada’s internet is too concentrated, and the incumbents have had an advantage for too long.

It’s clear which way the winds are blowing in Canadian telecommunications. Earlier this year, the Liberals issued a new policy direction for the CRTC, requiring competition, affordability, consumer interests and innovation to be at the heart of its decisions. And the CRTC is listening, as smaller providers called mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) are now on the table in the current proceeding reviewing Canada’s wireless market.

The Liberals’ election platform also put a continued commitment to affordable internet front and centre. In fact, nearly every party promised more competition and lower rates.

The wholesale regime is critical for internet affordability in Canada. It avoids unnecessarily duplicating infrastructure in favour of maximizing investments while fairly compensating those building our networks. And it is our best shot at breaking up the oligopoly that has been protected for too long, leading to wildly overpriced internet services that keep millions of Canadians underserved or offline.

If Trudeau’s government is serious about helping the middle class by lowering internet costs, they have no choice but to reject this petition. If cabinet gets this wrong, and overturns the CRTC’s decision, then we will need to find a new model – either by breaking up the big telecom companies’ retail and wholesale operations like the U.K. did, or by building a national fibre network that all providers have equal access to.

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The good news is that cabinet’s decision here is an easy one: Reject this appeal and send Canada’s telecoms back to deal with the consequences of grossly overcharging small providers and Canadians.

Correction: This story has been modified to note that Bell, Telus and Rogers did not all separately ask the federal cabinet to overturn the CRTC’s decision, rather a joint appeal was filed by five cable companies and Bell filed a separate appeal.

Laura Tribe is the executive director of OpenMedia, a non-profit organization working to keep the Internet open, affordable, and surveillance-free.

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