said by MaynardKrebs:What *is* galling about this is that Bell and all its officers have a legal responsibility to provide accurate information to the investing public (via the analysts) during these conference calls. There are financial and possible criminal sanctions for not doing so.
Yet these same cretins can stand before the CRTC and spout falsehood after falsehood without repercussions, or if there are possible repercussions that they are never enforced.
It's high time for all testimony before the CRTC to be sworn under oath, with severe penalties for false/misleading statements.
1) Corporate Death Penalty - ignore a CRTC ruling once, get fined $1mm/DAY; ignore the same or another ruling twice, get fined $10MM/DAY retroactive to the date of the first ruling; ignore a new or the same ruling a third time, the corporation's charter is cancelled and corporation is placed in receivership - shareholder's equity wiped out, corporation executives & directors placed on trial for contempt with all penalties payable personally.
2) Powers of Investigation to be added to IC/CRTC mandate - includes audit teams capable of surprise technical inspections, power to demand technical information on-the-spot, power to remove equipment/records for study. penalties for failure to comply are same as 1) above.
Agreed. The problem with the CRTC right now, is it's basically a GIGO system. If the Bell's and the Shaw's are able to tell them whatever lies they want to make things happen, then it only makes sense that the CRTC spits out the wrong rulings. Once in a while they do get things right, like the recent change making switching ISP's as easy as switching telephone providers. The problem is the calculator that is the CRTC is constantly getting told the wrong equations to the problems, and so they spit out an answer that makes sense to the problem they are presented with.
Legal accountability and documented statements based in truth are what needs to happen.
