Category: News

Amazon workers in the UK stage first ever strike, Samsung wallet becomes available in eight new markets including Canada and Shutterstock rolls out generative AI toolkit, following partnership with OpenAI.

That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Thursday, January 26 and I am your host, Ashee Pamma.

Amazon workers staged their first-ever strike in the U.K. at the e-commerce giant’s warehouse in Coventry, England. Staff complained that they are unhappy with the below-inflation pay increase and difficult working conditions. The GMB Union, representing the workers, said around 300 staff walked out at Amazon’s Coventry warehouse, denouncing a measly 5 per cent pay rise to £10.50 an hour. Workers told the BBC that they are constantly monitored, even when they go to the toilet and upbraided for “idle time” lasting just a few minutes. Another worker said that robots are treated better than workers. A spokesperson for Amazon told the BBC that it has a system “that recognises great performance” and performance is only measured when an employee is at their station and logged in to do their job.

Source: CNBC and BBC

Samsung Electronics today announced Samsung Wallet will be available in eight new markets, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan starting at the end of January. Samsung Wallet is a secure, go-everywhere app on Galaxy phones to organize and use daily essentials. The company says it has gone above and beyond to better safeguard customer data by storing it in a secure environment to help protect it from malware and other potential threats.

Source: Samsung Newsroom

Shutterstock has rolled out a generative AI toolkit to create images based on text prompts, following its partnership with OpenAI. Shutterstock allowed OpenAI to use its libraries to train and feed the algorithm of its image generating platform, Dall-E 2. Now, customers of Shutterstock’s Creative Flow online design platform will be able to create images based on text prompts, powered by OpenAI and Dall-E 2. Interestingly, Shutterstock says the images are “ready for licensing” right after they’re made. According to TechCrunch, this means that  Shutterstock seeks to embrace the use of AI and is setting itself up in opposition to competitor Getty who is currently embroiled in a lawsuit against Stability AI, who allegedly used Getty’s  images to train its AI without the appropriate permission.

Source: TechCrunch

Intel has canceled plans to build its Oregon Research and Design Mega Lab, a 200,000-square-foot facility designed to test data center cooling innovations, Data Center Knowledge reported. The chipmaker said it is exploring the most cost-effective real-estate options as it looks to cut $3 billion in spending in 2023. Pulling back on the data center plans already wipes out from that number,  $700 million announced for the lab in 2022. Facebook also canceled data center builds in Europe but cited changes in AI as the reason. This data center cancelation indicates another roadblock in Intel’s quest to unseat competitor AMD’s dominance in the data center chip space.

Source: Data Center Knowledge

A new study demonstrates that scientists have created robots that can shapeshift between solid and liquid states, enabling them to perform feats such as jumping, climbing and even oozing out of cage, Vice reported.The shape and movements of the machines are controlled by magnetic fields, an approach that may lead to new biomedical and engineering technologies, such as targeted drug delivery, circuit assembly, or the creation of universal screws. The dynamic shapeshifting powers of the robots could also be adapted to serve many functions, especially in biomedicine, including delivering medications to specific organs, or extracting dangerous objects from the body. The ability to switch between solid and liquid states could also be useful in accessing any confined or hard-to-reach spaces.

Source: Vice

That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash briefings or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. Also, catch the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which drops every Thursday morning. If you have a suggestion or a tip, drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thank you for listening, I’m Ashee Pamma.

The post Hashtag Trending Jan 26th-Amazon workers strike, Samsung wallet, Shutterstock embraces AI first appeared on IT World Canada.

How fans watch sports, and how coaches gauge the performance of individual players – and the team as a whole – is about to head in an entirely new direction following the launch yesterday of a research and development program called SportsX by MLSE Digital Labs and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Humza Teherany, chief technology and digital officer at Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE), described it as a “new incubator in collaboration with AWS, rooted in research, applied sciences and product development.”

The debut of SportsX follows an announcement from the two organizations, made last February, of the two innovating to “transform how some of Canada’s best-known sports franchises – Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto Raptors, Toronto Football Club (FC), and Toronto Argonauts – create and deliver extraordinary sports moments and enhanced fan engagement.”

As part of the agreement, MLSE selected AWS as its official cloud provider, as well as its official provider of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and deep learning cloud services.

The company said it will use AWS’ portfolio of cloud capabilities, including ML, advanced analytics, compute, database, and storage services to “to support their teams and lines of business. Innovating together, MLSE will build solutions that will support how teams play on the ice, court, pitch, or field; how players stay healthy; how fans connect with each other and experience games; and how sports franchises operate internally.”

Eric Gales, country manager for AWS Canada, said that just as the company is “democratizing technology by giving businesses of all sizes” access to the same cloud and AI offerings, “MLSE and AWS will give anyone, from organizations to superfans, the opportunity to take their amazing idea and transform the sport they love.”

On Monday night at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena, media were introduced to two pilots – Immersive Basketball Experience (IBX) and NHL Extended Reality Stats Overlay – both of which provided examples of the direction SportsX is heading in.

One took place in the Raptors’ practice facility and is based on augmented reality technology that combines “optical tracking body pose data, 3D models and a video game development engine to deliver the experience to any mixed reality headset.”

That experience means that, through the headsets, users can experience a basketball game from the perspective of fans who are sitting at courtside, coaches on the bench, or even the players themselves on the floor.

The other, demonstrated during the Maple Leafs’ tilt with the New York Islanders, provided a whole new way to watch a live hockey game via real time stats from NHL Edge, the league’s Puck and Player tracking technology which is currently deployed in all of the 32 NHL arenas and used in all NHL games. Through the use of AR glasses, SportsX created an overlay that allows fans to access data from NHL Edge, which, according to a fact sheet, “takes viewers deeper into the play on the ice.

“Infrared technology embedded in pucks and on players provides dozens of new insights for fans on things like puck possession, speed and distance travelled. The system has the ability to generate nearly one million 3D coordinates and data points over the course of a regulation game.

“The technology is demonstrated live using AWS Multi-Access Edge Compute (MEC) infrastructure. The tracking technology adds a new digital fan experience while pushing the boundaries of technology by giving fans access to information about the game in real-time.”

The program, a release states, is designed with a “bottom-up approach to capture, analyze, and build out the best ideas from key stakeholders, which include coaches, fans, partners, and employees. Chosen ideas will be evaluated for viability, developed, and tested in the MLSE environment with the goal of creating solutions that can benefit the sports industry at large.

“A dedicated SportsX web portal accompanies the launch, where interested stakeholders can join the collective and receive updates regarding idea submission openings.”

In an interview with IT World Canada, Teherany described this week’s announcements as the start of an “innovation partnership” in which not only MLSE and AWS will be involved, but potentially an entire fan base.

He said the SportsX web portal will allow anyone from sports fans to academics to submit recommendations on what they would like to see, and more importantly, how it can be achieved. “The next great idea,” said Teherany, “could come from anywhere.

“There’s really nothing like this in sport and I think over time we are going to discover some incredible tech enablers for sports and entertainment.

“Where do we think that NHL technology will go? And where do we think the NBA technology will go? We actually don’t know at this point, but to have a research and development mindset and to have the two entities together, working on it along with the rest of other smart people from academia, research and other places, there’s really nothing like this that exists in sports.”

Meanwhile, Christian Magsisi, vice president of technology and digital at MLSE, said there are three primary goals associated with the SportsX initiative, the first being to create experiences for fans that they have never had before.

“The second one obviously, is you want to create a competitive edge for teams, and with the help of AWS and the R&D program that SportsX has created, it will help us do that. And the third, and probably most important, is we want to create a positive social impact – environmental and social.”

The post SportsX: MLSE, AWS team up to launch unique R&D initiative first appeared on IT World Canada.

Early this morning customers worldwide, with the exception of those in China, lost access to Microsoft Azure, as well as to services such as Outlook, Exchange Online, and Teams. The company traced the issues to an update to its global wide area network (WAN), which it rolled back.

Microsoft’s Azure status history notes that the incident occurred between 07:05 UTC and 09:45 UTC (2:05 am – 4:45 am Eastern time), when, it says, “customers experienced issues with networking connectivity, manifesting as network latency and/or timeouts when attempting to connect to Azure resources in Public Azure regions, as well as other Microsoft services including M365 and PowerBI.”

It says that after final network equipment recovery occurred, most impacted services automatically recovered, and technicians then restored the remaining services.

The company has promised a preliminary post incident report in three days, which will discuss the initial root cause and repair items. It will follow up in 14 days with a final report in which, it says, it will “share a deep dive into the incident.”

The post Microsoft suffers global Azure outage first appeared on IT World Canada.

The Competition Bureau has said it will not be appealing the Federal Court’s decision after its motion to block the Rogers-Shaw merger was rejected yesterday.

“We are truly disappointed that the Federal Court of Appeal has dismissed our appeal of the Competition Tribunal’s decision in Rogers-Shaw,” said Matthew Boswell, commissioner of competition. “Although today’s developments are discouraging, we stand by the findings of our investigation and the decision to challenge the merger.”

The verdict was clear-cut and overwhelmingly backed the Competition Tribunal’s decision, which the bureau argued to be legally flawed.

Rogers, Shaw and Quebecor conveyed their satisfaction with the verdict in a joint statement. “We welcome this clear, unequivocal, and unanimous decision by the Federal Court of Appeal. We continue to work with Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada to secure the final approval needed to close the pro-competitive transactions and create a stronger fourth wireless carrier in Canada and a more formidable wireline competitor.”

The Federal Court’s decision and the bureau backing down means that the C$26 billion merger deal can now proceed to Minister François-Phillipe Champagne for his final approval.

However, independent internet service provider (ISP), TekSavvy is still hoping that the merger will go to the CRTC for more scrutiny before the Minister gives his verdict. The ISP said in a tweet yesterday that the court’s decision does not change the fact that “the Rogers-Shaw merger is based on an unlawful side deal with Videotron that will kill competition and raise consumer prices.” TekSavvy’s appeal to the CRTC to block the merger, announced last week, was introduced by the Bureau as additional evidence, which the Federal court rejected.

Today, the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, who previously issued a study suggesting that the merger should not proceed, is holding hearings to investigate competition concerns with the deal.

It is, however, unlikely that today’s hearings will affect Champagne’s decision, Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa said in a blog post.

“He’s [Champagne] likely to tout the conditions on the deal, promise Competition Act reform, and announce his approval late on a Thursday before a holiday week so there are no questions to answer in the House of Commons. But if this is the path he chooses, Canadians must recognize that it is a choice.”

There is ample evidence that the merger should not proceed, Geist said, including the bureau’s and TekSavvy’s applications, as well as “the undeniable frustration of Canadians over communications competition and pricing.”

“Minister Champagne and the government can choose to stand up for Canadian consumers and say this deal doesn’t go ahead on their watch. Or they can stand with big telecom companies and choose to make matters even worse. It’s Champagne’s choice,” Geist stated.

The post Rogers-Shaw merger: Competition Bureau gives up the fight, House of Commons begins its scrutiny first appeared on IT World Canada.

Data Privacy Week advice, terrible patching statistics and more

Welcome to Cyber Security Today. It’s Wednesday, January 25th, 2023. I’m Howard Solomon, contributing reporter on cybersecurity for ITWorldCanada.com and TechNewsday.com in the U.S.

This is Data Privacy Week. My stories with advice for businesses are posted on ITWorldCanada.com. For individuals wanting to improve their privacy online, here’s a few tips: Say as little about yourself on social media as possible. No one online needs to know your birthday, or that you bought a new house, new car or jewelry. When you register for an internet service or buy anything online, find out how much personal data is collected. Is it really necessary for the transaction? What will the website do with your personal data? When you get a mobile app for your smartphone, before installing pay attention to what it accesses. Does it need to access your contact list, the phone’s camera or microphone? When you go to some websites they offer ads. Can you opt out of the ads? You should be told when website data-collecting cookies are being used and given the choice of not allowing them. Finally, privacy is related to your cybersecurity practices. So create safe passwords. Use a different password on every site. Use a password manager to keep track of them. And keep the operating systems of your computers and smart phones up to date by installing the latest patches. Don’t forget to patch your home WiFi router. For more information go to StaySafeOnline.org and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Encrypted backups made by users of GoTo Central, GoTo Pro, Hamachi and RemotelyAnywhere were stolen by a hacker in an incident last November, GoTo has admitted. Worse, the hacker got an encryption key for some of the encrypted backups. The scrambled backups were stolen from a third-party cloud storage service used by GoTo. The affected information, which varies by product, may include account usernames, salted and hashed passwords, a portion of multifactor authentication settings, as well as some product settings and licensing information. In addition, while GoTo Rescue and GoToMyPC encrypted databases were not copied, multifactor settings of a small subset of their customers were. GoTo is resetting the passwords of affected users and reauthorize multifactor authentication settings where applicable.

Hackers love exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities. One reason is companies are slow to install fixes. How slow? According to Orange Cyberdefense, a division of the European cellular provider called Orange, only 20 per cent of its customers are installing security patches in 30 days or less after fixes are released. Even some critical vulnerabilities aren’t fixed until six months after a patch is issued. And some vulnerabilities aren’t discovered or patched at all. The report, given to The Hacker News, doesn’t explain why it can take so long for some holes to be dealt with.

Two vulnerabilities in Samsung’s Galaxy App Store have been discovered by researchers at NCC Group. One could have allowed a hacker to automatically install a malicious app on a device without the owner’s knowledge. This problem only affects devices running Android 12 or lower. The other problem could have allowed an app store user to go to an attacker-controlled domain. Samsung has released a new version of the Galaxy App Store. All Samsung mobile devices users should open the app store on their devices and, if prompted, download the latest version of the store.

Attention users of the Dashlane, Bitwarden and Safari browser password managers. Make sure you’re running the latest versions. Google says it has discovered a vulnerability allowing usernames and passwords to be automatically filled into untrusted web pages without the user having to enter their master password and launch the password manager.

Finally, users of the WordPress education plugin called LearnPress are being warned to update to the latest version. This comes after researchers at Patchstack discovered several critical vulnerabilities. This plugin allows WordPress customers to create and sell courses online. The fix was published in December but many users may not have heard.

Follow Cyber Security Today on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or add us to your Flash Briefing on your smart speaker.

The post Cyber Security Today, Jan. 25, 2023 – Data Privacy Week advice, terrible patching statistics and more first appeared on IT World Canada.

The US Department of Justice files an antitrust lawsuit against Google’s ad business, Microsoft looks to find out the number of unsupported Microsoft Office installed on Windows PCs and China leads in exports of face recognition technology.

That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Wednesday, January 25th. And I am your host, Ashee Pamma

The US Department of Justice has filed its second antitrust lawsuit against Google, in just over two years, this time seeking to break up its advertising business. Google’s advertising business has drawn critics, CNBC explained, because the platform operates on multiple sides of the market — buying, selling and an ad exchange. The company has long denied that it dominates the online advertising market, pointing to the market share of competitors including Meta’s Facebook.The states of California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Virginia joined the DOJ in the latest lawsuit. The Department’s earlier lawsuit, filed in October 2020 under the Trump administration, accused Google of using its alleged monopoly power to cut off competition for internet search through exclusionary agreements. That case is expected to go to trial in September.

Source: CNBC News

  Microsoft intends to find out how many out-of-support copies of Office are installed on Windows PCs, by pushing a patch through Microsoft Update, the Register wrote. The update, quietly mentioned in a support post, is targeting Office 2007 and 2010 versions which have been out of service for several years. Office 2013 is also being asked after as it’s due to lose support this coming April. “This update will run one time silently without installing anything on the user’s device,” Microsoft said, followed by instructions on how to download and install the update, which Microsoft said has been scanned to ensure it’s not infected by malware. Microsoft’s Show or Hide Updates troubleshooter for Windows 10 and 11 can be used to disable undesired ones from being installed but the unforeseen consequences are unknown.

Source: The Register

According to a report by academics at Harvard and MIT, China is the world’s biggest face recognition dealer. The report finds that Chinese companies account for 201 face recognition export deals, followed by US firms with 128 deals. China also has a lead in AI generally, with 250 out of a total of 1,636 export deals involving some form of AI. The second biggest exporter was the US, with 215 AI deals. The report argues that these exports may enable other governments to perform more surveillance, potentially harming citizens’ human rights. In recent years US lawmakers and presidents have expressed concern that China is gaining an edge over the US in AI technology. The report seems to offer hard evidence that the shift has already occurred, Wired reported.  

Source: Wired

SpaceX Starlink has entered into a coordination agreement with the US National Science Foundation (NSF) to mitigate light pollution, emanating from its satellite network and interfering with ground-based astronomy observations. The agreement was enforced by the Biden FCC, which wouldn’t give approval for Starlink’s 30,000 satellite launches until such a deal was struck. As part of that agreement, Starlink said it would continue to work to dim its satellites to no brighter than the 7th magnitude, making them invisible to the naked eye and reducing, but not eliminating, their effect on sensitive astronomical instruments. The agreement is voluntary, since beyond the FCC requirement for such an agreement there is no law or policy requiring SpaceX or other satellite operators to mitigate the effects of their constellation on astronomy.

Source: Space News

According to LiveMint, nearly 80,000 Indian IT professionals on H-1B and L1 visas are now jobless and scrambling to find solutions to stay in the U.S., following mass layoffs at Google, Microsoft and Amazon last week. Workers on these non-immigrant visas now have to find a new job in the stipulated few months time allowed or change their visa status. Those on H-1B visas have to find a new job within 60 days or head back to India. Global Indian Technology Professionals Association (GITPRO) and Foundation for India and Indian Diaspora Studies (FIIDS) launched a community-wide effort to try and help these IT professionals by connecting job seekers to job referrers. They also seek to influence policymakers and decision-makers of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

Source: LiveMint

That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash briefings or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. Also, catch the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which drops every Thursday morning. If you have a suggestion or a tip, drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thank you for listening, I’m Ashee Pamma.

The post Hashtag Trending January 25th- DOJ files lawsuit against Google, Microsoft checking for out-of-support of Office and China leads in face recognition export first appeared on IT World Canada.

Canadian companies still aren’t doing enough to respect the privacy of residents, the federal privacy commissioner said in an interview marking Data Privacy Week.

“In our annual report … we saw a number of instances where there are still shortcomings in terms of how privacy is considered,” Philippe Dufresne said Monday.

In particular, he cited four cases from the report for the 12-month period ending March 31, 2022:

— a joint investigation with provincial privacy officers in Quebec, Alberta, and B.C. found Tim Hortons’ mobile app inappropriately tracked and recorded its customers’ movements every few minutes of every day, even when the app was not open. The collection of what the report called “vast” amounts of location information was not proportional to the benefits the company may have hoped to gain from better-targeted promotion of its coffee and other products. Customers’ consent for collecting that data was done through “unclear, and in certain circumstances, misleading statements;”

— a Rogers Communications customer was enrolled in its Voice ID voiceprint biometric authentication program without her consent. In fact, after discovering she had been enrolled, the customer called Rogers and once again opted out of the program, only to discover that she was still in it. Rogers agreed to get express consent from individuals for this program;

— trucking firm Trimac Transportation Services Inc. had installed dash cameras in its vehicles that continuously recorded audio and video without drivers’ consent. Video and audio clips transferred to Trimac were available, with limited safeguards against unauthorized access, to more Trimac employees than necessary. The company agreed the audio recording should only be active when a driver is on-duty or driving, and to limit the availability of the recordings;

— a Quebec company authorized by the federal government to administer mandatory COVID-19 tests at the Montreal-Trudeau airport used its position to send marketing emails to 147,000 travelers it tested without their consent. The company wrongly thought it had established a “business relationship with arriving passengers and thus relied on implied consent to send email ads,” the report said.

The four examples Dufresne cited involve improperly collecting personal data without proper consent. The website of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner says that under the federal private sector privacy law known as the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), “organizations are required to obtain meaningful consent for the collection, use and disclosure of personal information. Consent is considered meaningful when individuals are provided with clear information explaining what organizations are doing with their information.”

SIDEBAR: PIPEDA applies to federally-regulated commercial firms and companies in all provinces and territories except in B.C., Alberta and Ontario. Here’s a brief outline of what businesses should and shouldn’t do.

During Privacy Week, business and IT leaders should be thinking about what they can do to create a stronger culture of privacy in the workplace and in Canadian society, Dufresne said. “When I was appointed privacy commissioner [last summer] I put forward a vision of privacy that recognizes privacy as a fundamental right, privacy in support of the public interest and Canada’s innovation and competitiveness, and privacy as an accelerator of Canadians’ trust in their institutions and their participation as digital citizens.”

“That means treating privacy as a priority,” he said, “not as an afterthought, as a mere regulatory obligation, but something that is fundamental to individuals and society.

“For organizations, that means conducting privacy impact assessments in appropriate cases to ensure privacy risks are identified and mitigated. It means asking questions and making sure that they are only collecting, using, retaining and disposing of personal information to the extent that it’s demonstrably necessary and proportional to achieving the organization’s legitimate purposes.

“It means that individuals must be properly trained within the organization so that not only do they have good policies, but they are implemented properly and followed through. It means putting up safeguards to protect information against what we are seeing more and more in terms of data breaches and increased threats. And it means leaders recognizing and putting forward a vision of privacy that treats it as a fundamental right and not as an obstacle to the pursuit of an organization’s objectives — whether it’s innovation or economic — but as an asset, something that will support and strengthen those goals and ultimately increase Canadians’ trust in organization and society.”

While Dufresne calls for privacy to be a fundamental right, that’s not what the Liberal government has proposed in its overhaul of PIPEDA, known as Bill C-27. Dufresne said he will outline his detailed opinion on the proposed legislation to Parliament. He didn’t call for amending the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, however, he did say privacy should have “special status” if there is a conflict with other interests.

The government has said that the importance of privacy protection is mentioned in the legislation’s preamble.

The post Data Privacy Week: Some Canadian firms have ‘shortcomings’ in treating privacy, says regulator first appeared on IT World Canada.

The federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) applies to all businesses in Canada except those in B.C., Alberta, and Quebec.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) notes that PIPEDA states that any collection, use, or disclosure of personal information must only be for purposes that a reasonable person would consider appropriate in the circumstances.

PIPEDA is based on 10 fair principles for the collection and use of personal data of employees, customers and partners. Three of these are, arguably, the most important:

— the knowledge and consent of the individual are required for the collection, use, or disclosure of personal information, except where inappropriate;

— the collection of personal information must be limited to what is needed for the purposes identified by the organization. Information must be collected by fair and lawful means;

— unless the individual consents otherwise or it is required by law, personal information can only be used or disclosed for the purposes for which it was collected. Personal information must only be kept as long as required to serve those purposes.

To make it clearer, the OPC says the following purposes would generally be considered inappropriate — or, what it calls no-go zones — by a reasonable person:

collecting, using, or disclosing personal information in ways that are otherwise unlawful;
profiling or categorizing individuals in a way that leads to unfair, unethical, or discriminatory treatment contrary to human rights law;
collecting, using, or disclosing personal information for purposes that are known to, or likely to, cause significant harm to the individual;
publishing personal information with the intent of charging people for its removal;
requiring employees to provide passwords to their social media accounts to employers for the purpose of employee screening; and
conducting surveillance on an individual using their own device’s audio or video functions.
The post Sidebar: PIPEDA’s ‘No-go’ zones for businesses first appeared on IT World Canada.

Today, the Competition Bureau is making its case in front of the Federal Court of Appeal in Ottawa, in its latest attempt to kill the Rogers-Shaw merger. 

The main arguments of the bureau revolved around legal errors that it claims led the Competition Tribunal to rule in favor of the transaction on Dec. 29, 2022.

The bureau also introduced TekSavvy’s appeal to the CRTC to review the merger as additional evidence for the appeal.

The Rogers-Shaw merger, according to the competition watchdog, should have been considered independently as a standalone transaction before looking at the side deal (the proposed sale of Freedom Mobile to Vidéotron), which it refers to as ‘parasitic’, as it lives or dies based on whether the merger agreement survives.

The Competition Tribunal said previously that the decision would not have been any different if the scrutiny had been carried out in the way the bureau wished.

The bureau argued today that it does not have a crystal ball to know for certain whether the outcome would have been different, but ‘doubt’ exists and that has to be cleared, especially when it concerns millions of Canadians in western provinces who are cell phone users. “They deserve to know.”

Furthermore, the bureau argued, the proposed divestiture of Freedom Mobile to Vidéotron is a remedy that is purely imbued with behavioural remedies (the future behaviour of the merged entity) rather than structural remedies (a one-shot measure intended to maintain/restore the structure of the market by creating a new/enhanced competitor). Behavioural remedies, the bureau argued, are not acceptable under Section 92 of the Competition Act.

This realization led Rogers and Shaw to shift gears in August 2022 and amend their pleadings and language to make it seem like the transaction is one with the proposed side divestiture, so that they would offset the behavioural components of considering Freedom-Vidéotron as a standalone remedy.

Accepting the Tribunal’s decision means circumventing the Competition Act, the bureau argued. “There’s an important balance between what the commissioner does and what the tribunal does, and the tribunal adjudicates on what’s brought before them,” it said, instead of redefining the very transaction brought before it.

It is not known whether today’s hearing will result in a same-day verdict. The deal will go through another round of scrutiny tomorrow by the House of Commons industry and technology committee, before it heads to Minister François-Philippe Champagne for the final verdict.

Shaw and Rogers are hoping to finalize the deal before Jan. 31 to avoid heavy penalties or lawsuits from investors.

The post Rogers-Shaw deal goes to federal court; Competition Bureau says proposed sale of Freedom to Vidéotron is ‘parasitic’ first appeared on IT World Canada.