Liberal Party Announces Vague Promise to Reduce Cell Phone Bills

Digital issues became a small blip on the election radar today in the Canadian election. The Liberals are now saying they would lower cell phone bills.

Things have grown quiet on the election front in Canada as far as digital issues are concerned. This is, of course, thanks in part due to Liberal leader, Justin Trudeau, appearing in photo’s where he wore blackface. The photo itself was leaked by Conservatives to Time magazine. The photo derailed the Liberal party’s election for the better part of three days now as the leader faced a potentially career ending scandal.

Now, here we are, four days later. Trudeau is trying to change the channel and talk about policy announcements. Today, he announced a promise that he would reduce cell phone bills. The plan, unfortunately, wound up being long on promise and short on specifics.

The plan essentially says that he would reduce cell phone bills by 25%. When reporters asked for more specifics, Trudeau simply said that he would engage with the cell phone companies. In response to the part of the question where cell phone companies are supposedly implementing 5G networks, he simply made a vague comment that he would invest in the infrastructure. That’s all we got out of the entire press conference.

Now, if you’ve followed the election coverage so far, this promise will seem quite familiar. This is because the NDP unveiled their plan to reduce cell phone and Internet bills. This was announced at the beginning of the election two weeks ago. The plan, of course, was more concrete. You almost get the impression that the Liberals are simply trying to copy the NDP at this point.

The practicality of simply asking companies for a 25% decrease is where things get murky. Would the government put in place laws that would tell companies what rates to reduce bills to? If so, how would that pass constitutional muster? If not, then is the Liberals planning on just politely asking? What if the cell phone companies simply say “no”?

Then there is the question about track record. If the Liberal party is so concerned about cell phone bills, why wasn’t this done during his last mandate? After all, Canadians paying high cell phone bills is nothing new. Arguably, this issue extends all the way back to when cell phones started growing in popularity in the first place. At minimum, people have been complaining about this since the beginning of the mandate. So, why wasn’t anything done about it?

So, at this stage in the election, we see the Green Party far out ahead with a full platform with loads of details on solving many digital issues. The NDP are pretty much sitting in second with having released a plan to lower cell phone and Internet bills. The Liberals pretty much tripped out of the starting gate and fell on their faces with a vague promise about cell phone bills. Meanwhile, everyone else is seemingly still on the starting block. With the election being called clear back on the 11th of this month, digital issues appear to be moving at a relatively slow pace at this point 11 days in.

Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.