Retour à l’actualité complète

Robert Ghiz, Canadian Telecommunications Association President & CEO

2026 Canadian Telecom Summit: Keynote

May 12, 2026

***Check Against Delivery***

Canada’s Connectivity Crossroads: Investment, Infrastructure and National Priorities

Good afternoon, everyone. It’s a pleasure to be back at the Canadian Telecom Summit.

For those of you who have heard me speak here before, you’ll know that I usually stand on this stage and talk about growth. I talk about how this industry has expanded, how networks have improved, how investment has increased, how Canadian telecommunications has consistently delivered for Canadians, and how things are only going to get better.

But this year is a little different.

Because today, we are at an inflection point. And it’s important that we have an honest conversation about what that means.

Let me start with what hasn’t changed.

Canadians rely on telecommunications more than ever before. They are consuming more data. And they are benefiting from faster speeds, better performance, and more reliable networks than at any point in the past.

At the same time, they are getting more for less. Prices have dropped, services have improved, and intense competition has delivered tangible benefits for Canadians.

But success brings its own consequences. The better we do; the more is expected of us.

What was once a convenience is now essential. What was once “nice to have” is now “must have.” And that shift has fundamentally changed the role of this sector.

Telecommunications is no longer just another part of the economy. It is the platform the economy runs on. It underpins how businesses operate, how governments deliver services, and how Canadians connect with each other and the world. It is critical infrastructure for economic growth, national security, and innovation.

Because of this, telecommunications providers are not only being asked to deliver basic connectivity—they are also being asked to build networks that can withstand more frequent and severe weather events. They are being asked to harden infrastructure against increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. They are being asked to support law enforcement in new and evolving ways. And they are being asked to continually innovate and upgrade technology so Canada can compete with the rest of the world.

These are important objectives. They reflect national priorities. But they also come with real—and growing—costs.

And that brings us to the inflection point.

Because at the very moment when expectations of this sector are rising, the sector’s capacity to invest at the levels needed to support those expectations is under increasing strain. There are several reasons for this.

The first is demographic. Canada has entered a period of very limited – and at times negative – population growth. In a market that already has high penetration rates, that matters.

In recent years, industry growth has been driven in large part by adding new subscribers. As population growth slows, so too does the sector’s ability to expand through subscriber growth alone.

The second is pricing. There is a persistent myth that Canadians pay among the highest wireless prices in the world. But that narrative simply does not reflect what is happening in the market today.

Anyone who has walked through a mall, looked online, or spoken to friends and family who have shopped for a wireless plan recently, knows how much wireless prices have declined in recent years.

You have probably heard references to Statistics Canada’s cellular price index which shows that since 2020 mobile wireless prices are down by almost 50%. But that doesn’t tell the full story.

In its recent report entitled, Delivering More for Less: How telecommunications is easing cost-of-living for Canadian households, which you can download from our website, PwC reports that between 2020 and 2024, prices for some of the most popular wireless plans dropped by as much as 70%. Recently, we have seen even lower prices, with promotional offers as low as $25 a month for 80GB of data and North American roaming.

At a time when the cost of most essential goods and services has increased, no sector has done more than telecommunications to help counter inflation in Canada.

As PwC notes, telecom prices have fallen sharply while service quality and network performance have continued to improve—making telecommunications one of the only sectors consistently delivering more for less to Canadians.

While this is good news for consumers, it also has broader consequences. Telecommunications is a highly capital-intensive industry. With slow population growth and declining prices, revenue growth has remained relatively flat. In this environment, it is more important than ever to have policies that support investment in network infrastructure.

This brings me to the third factor: the regulatory environment.

Over the past several years, we have seen policy decisions that are having a material impact on the economics of our sector. Most notably, the CRTC’s wholesale internet access framework has evolved from a regime designed to help smaller competitors enter the market into one that increasingly weakens the incentive for the largest telecom providers to continue expanding and upgrading their networks. In fact, it encourages them to become resellers.

We have also seen the prohibition of fees designed to cover the cost of delivering specific services. We are seeing regulation move beyond setting the rules of the market and further into managing its day-to-day operations—often in ways that increase costs and complexity. At the same time, providers are being asked to take on new responsibilities that extend beyond their traditional role, frequently without a clear mechanism for recovering the associated costs.

Some of these decisions attempted to solve problems that did not exist.

Others prioritized the hope of short-term gains over the very real and predictable long-term consequences for investment and our sector’s ability to keep pace with the evolving needs of Canadians.

When the federal government ordered the CRTC to reconsider its interim decision allowing the three largest telecom providers to use aggregated FTTP services, it said it had concerns about the decision’s impact on ongoing and future investments in broadband infrastructure. More recently, Minister Joly stated that the CRTC “is empowered to course-correct if the evidence warrants it.”

We have yet to see a proper assessment from the CRTC on how these decisions are affecting investment in Canada’s telecommunications networks. But the financial market has already provided one.

Since the decision, we have seen a steady decline in investment in network infrastructure. That is multiple billions of dollars that is no longer being invested in telecom each year. Industry analysts have directly linked the decline in investment to the regulatory environment.

Following a national operator’s recent announcement of a significant cut to its annual capex, Scotiabank stated that they made “the right decision ….to materially cut capex against a backdrop of lower industry revenue growth but more importantly as a result of a continued adverse regulatory environment.” TD Cowen similarly observed that there is “less reason to build these networks if TELUS and other competitors can gain access at unpredictable wholesale rates set by the CRTC.” They further warned that fibre upgrades could be delayed or cancelled, and that some rural deployments may no longer justify investment.

TD Cowen also pointed to what it described as punitive and unnecessary micromanagement—including rules related to activation fees and contract terms—as additional factors contributing to reduced investment.

The evidence is already here. We are seeing a steady erosion of the incentives that drive investment in telecommunications infrastructure.

The gap between how we talk about telecommunications and how we treat it is starting to show. Policymakers describe investment in critical infrastructure as essential to Canada’s future but, when it comes to telecommunications, too often they regulate it as though it were discretionary, or that the laws of economics do not apply to telecom.

This raises a fundamental question: is Canada’s telecommunications framework truly designed for an era in which connectivity is critical national infrastructure?

If expectations of telecom continue to rise, but the investment environment continues to weaken, underinvestment will not be temporary, it will become structural.

When investment slows, the effects are inevitable. Networks expansion slows. Capacity growth lags demand. The adoption of new technologies becomes more difficult.

Over time, that affects the quality, resilience, and competitiveness of our networks. And ultimately, it affects our ability to advance broader national priorities, such as building a more resilient economy, improving productivity, and strengthening Canada’s security and sovereignty.

As we stand at this inflection point, the question is not whether telecommunications matters. That question has already been answered. The question is whether we are creating the conditions for it to continue to succeed.

Because this sector has delivered. It has invested. It has innovated. It has built the foundation of Canada’s digital economy.

Now the choice is clear. We can align our policies with our ambitions—and ensure Canada continues to build, compete, and lead—or we can continue down our current path, and accept a future where maintaining Canada’s leadership in connectivity becomes increasingly difficult.

In a country that depends on connectivity as much as Canada does, that is not a small choice. It is a defining one.

Thank you.