If the Competition Bureau gets its way and Rogers’s buyout of Shaw is blocked, the only winners will be fellow telcos, Shaw’s lawyer Kent Thomson argued to the Competition Tribunal as a trial on the market effects of the $26-billion deal began Monday. (The Logic)

Talking point: Thomson told the tribunal that even putting the merits of the deal aside, competition commissioner Matthew Boswell is seeking to block a straight purchase of Shaw by Rogers, which is not “the actual transaction that the parties intend to proceed with.” It now includes selling Shaw’s discount Freedom Mobile brand to Videotron, Thomson said. Tribunal member Paul Crampton, chief justice of the Federal Court, pointedly asked the bureau’s lawyers to address that as more than four scheduled weeks of evidence and arguments proceed. In his own opening statement, Competition Bureau lawyer John Tyhurst played an old Shaw ad making fun of the Big Three wireless providers’ oligopoly. He said the Videotron divestiture won’t create a sturdy standalone competitor, citing its dependence on an ongoing deal with Rogers (with which Videotron has already had problems) to make it work.