Throughout the 20th century, Canada built a world-leading telecommunications system through a productive balance of private and public carriers. But within a generation, conservative governments at all levels across the country privatized almost all of the public side of that balance. Today, NDP Leader Avi Lewis’ “public option” platform is recontesting the question that Prairie telecom pioneers first fought for 120 years ago. Furthermore, Canada has fallen behind countries around the world in building out fibre telecom infrastructure for faster internet speeds. Many of these countries have maintained public ownership in their markets while Canada’s public telecom shrinks. However, SaskTel, one of the last holdouts of public telecom in Canada, outperforms the national average on fibre deployment. This article makes the case that to continue to invest in the 21st century economy, Canada has to rebuild public ownership of telecoms.
This article presents the first known comprehensive compilation of Canadian telecoms revenues by ownership type spanning seven decades, from 1953 to the present, built from Statistics Canada, CRTC and ISED data, GMICP database, and primary sources. It also compiles ownership and fibre deployment data for eight OECD countries that, unlike Canada, maintained a productive mix of publicly- and privately-owned companies. Of the many modern telecoms metrics, fibre deployment is an indicator that defies the logic of privatization: it is the fastest and most future-proof of fixed technologies, but also capital-intensive, making it less attractive on commercial terms in lower-density markets. The same conditions drove farmer and labour movements to push governments to buy out Bell Telephone Company of Canada’s Prairie operations between 1906 and 1908.
The early 1900s were the height of the progressive movements in North America—a broad democratic reaction against the Gilded Age and its robber barons, who had used concentrated private control of industry to extract wealth from workers and farmers. In Ontario, the 1905 provincial election turned on whether the province should have its own electricity company, establishing what would become Ontario Hydro in 1906. At the same time, a struggle was taking place on the telephone side across the Prairie provinces.
Privately-owned Bell Canada had extended its network westward past its home base of Ontario and Quebec, but the service in the newly-created Prairie provinces was focused on businesses in the cities. Manitoba farmers and residents organized and forced the question of public ownership to a referendum in 1906, and the following year the provincial government purchased Bell’s Manitoba operations to create what would become Manitoba Telephones System (MTS). Based on that demonstration, the Saskatchewan and Alberta provincial governments too bought out Bell’s operations in 1908 and 1909 to form what would become Saskatchewan’s Department of Railways, Telegraphs and Telephones (later, Saskatchewan Government Telephones, before SaskTel) and Alberta Government Telephones (AGT). During the same period, municipalities such as Edmonton, Alberta and Thunder Bay, Ontario set up their own municipal telephone systems.
In just a few years, sustained political advocacy led to publicly owned telephone companies that would serve one-in-six Canadians. By 1953, public carriers at all levels of government accounted for roughly 16% of total Canadian telecom revenues, as shown in Figure 1, though private carriers still held most of the market. Bell Canada dominated the private sector early on, serving Ontario and Quebec; BC Tel served British Columbia and a series of provincially-based private companies served each of the Atlantic provinces. On the public side were the three Prairie provincial carriers, AGT, MTS and SaskTel, as well as a series of municipal systems including EdTel. Federal crown corporations such as Teleglobe, CNCP Telecoms (50%/50% public private), Northwestel, TerraNova Telephones, and Telesat, would grow to become some of the largest publicly-owned entities, providing telecom services to rural, remote and Northern communities, satellite services, and transoceanic cable infrastructure that connected Canadians to the world. This balance of private and public provision was highly successful in delivering service and innovation for all Canadians. Despite the vast distances and relatively low population density, by 1960 Canada had the highest number of phones per inhabitant in the world.
Under a wave of neoliberalism that swept the world and began to crest over Canada, the federal Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney began the privatization of public telecoms in 1987, selling the federal telecom crown corporations over six years, as presented in Table 1. Alberta Progressive Conservative Premier Don Getty sold AGT in 1990 — which would go on to become TELUS, merge with BC Tel, and acquire EdTel with the agreement of a conservative-aligned City of Edmonton Mayor and council. By the time Progressive Conservative Premier Gary Filmon sold MTS in Manitoba in 1996, within ten years, conservative governments had privatized 20% of the telecoms sector for $8.8 billion (2025$).
These privatizations were driven by the belief in the supremacy of private ownership, as a matter of political conviction. This was a direct repudiation of the political tradition the Prairie reformers had built. But ideology and fiscal interest ran together: the $8.8 billion in proceeds over 10 years allowed these governments to reduce deficits, cut taxes, and improve their electoral fiscal position.
Figure 2 tells a stark story. Public carriers that accounted for about 25% of Canadian telecom revenues in 1980 had fallen to below 3% by 2000, and have remained at the bottom of that crater ever since. At the same time, many OECD countries also undertook telecom privatizations in the 1990s. Some, however, kept a public hand in their communications infrastructure—and as Table 2 shows, that choice has produced measurably different outcomes.
The advantages of public ownership in a capital-intensive network industry are well understood: lower borrowing costs, no profit extraction, patient capital that plans for generations rather than quarterly returns, and investment decisions aligned with democratic needs rather than corporate ones. Table 2 shows what those advantages produce in practice.
Table 2 shows eight OECD countries that, unlike Canada, maintained or rebuilt a balance of private and public ownership as a deliberate policy choice. The data is built from OECD and CRTC data and primary sources. All eight countries presented below have done so in today’s fully competitive, multi-carrier environment spanning fixed telephones, mobile, and Internet. In that environment, public equity stakes account for an average of 21% of revenues across these eight countries, against less than 3% in Canada.
Focusing on fibre deployment, across the eight countries the average is 22 connections per 100 inhabitants, well above Canada’s 14 per 100, and above the OECD average of 17 per 100. The clear difference is public ownership: the eight countries with a bigger public hand in the market add 10 public fibre connections per 100 to a base of 12 private connections. Canada’s private carriers deliver 14, comparable to the private sector performance of these peer countries. The gap is not explained by private underperformance; but rather, by the absence of a public fibre mandate.
The proof is not only international; Saskatchewan still maintains a public carrier while most of Canada does not. SaskTel’s fibre penetration is 17 per 100 inhabitants, above the Canadian average. By deploying fibre as a public mandate across a vast territory with a low and dispersed population, SaskTel has out-fibred the Canadian private sector that has focused mostly on urban and suburban markets to date. Where Canada kept a public carrier with a mandate to build, it built. Where Canada privatized, it fell behind, not just behind the OECD average, but behind lower-density Saskatchewan which kept its publicly-owned carrier.
SaskTel and Thunder Bay Tel are living proof that the “public option” can operate successfully today in a competitive market, delivering service, employing union workers, and returning revenues to public coffers rather than private shareholders. Rebuilding public ownership means setting up new public enterprises where coverage or competitive gaps exist, and targeted acquisitions where opportunities arise.
The Manitoba farmers who forced a referendum in 1906 understood that communications infrastructure was not a private luxury, but a public necessity, and that ownership was a political question before it was an economic one. They had conviction and organizing power. Now there is evidence to match. The question Avi Lewis is recontesting today has been answered. It is time to act on it.
