Shaw is losing ground to Telus as an internet provider and Videotron is better able to run its Freedom Mobile wireless division, Shaw’s and Videotron’s lawyers argued to the Competition Tribunal, defending Rogers’s buyout of the western telco on the last day of tribunal hearings. The competition commissioner, who opposes the deal, “has not put forward a scintilla of evidence to challenge many elements of my client’s proposed acquisition” of Freedom, Videotron lawyer John Rook told the three-member panel hearing the case. (The Logic)

Talking point: Paul Crampton, the chief justice of the Federal Court and the head of the tribunal panel, noted that Rogers’s and Shaw’s proposal to divest Freedom to Videotron right away makes the case unusual; it builds into the Rogers-Shaw deal a corporate manoeuvre that would typically be part of a post-merger remedy to preserve competition. That means the panel has to say yes or no to both Rogers’s acquisition of Shaw and Videotron’s acquisition of Freedom at the same time. Crampton has said he hopes to deliver a decision before Dec. 25.