Communication is a process by which information, thoughts and feelings are exchanged between or among individuals.

Telecommunication is the transmission of signals over some distance for the purpose of communication. Invention of the telephone in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell was a milestone in the search for ways to communicate over great distances with speed and reliability.

It’s hard to image but prior to the telephone, distance communications were delivered by drums, smoke signals and bugles or they were delivered in written messages by carrier pigeons and human transport.

The world's first definitive tests of the telephone occurred in Brantford, Ontario, in 1876 with one-way transmissions. The age of telephone service in Canada was really launched in 1877, when Alexander Graham Bell transferred a 75% interest in his telephone patent to his father, Alexander Melville Bell for one dollar.

In 1880 the Dominion Telegraph Company secured a license to operate the Bell patent in Canada for 5 years. Dominion Telegraph was unable to raise the $100 000 asked by Bell for purchase of the patent so Canadian rights were sold in 1880 to the National Bell Telephone Company of Boston (later to become American Telephone and Telegraph or AT&T).

In 1880, through an Act of Parliament, the Bell Telephone Company of Canada was incorporated. Today, it is owned by Bell Canada Enterprises Inc. (BCE). Bell was authorized to construct telephone lines over and along all public property and rights-of-way. By 1881, Bell Telephone had acquired all existing telephone interests in Canada.

In 1885, a number of Bell patents were expired by the Government of Canada, making it possible for independent telephone companies to offer service, some in direct competition with Bell.

The growth of competing companies in the Maritimes was instrumental in causing Bell to withdraw from this region. In 1885 Bell abandoned Prince Edward Island to the newly formed Telephone Company of Prince Edward Island. In 1888 Bell sold its facilities in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to the newly formed Nova Scotia Telephone Company.

In 1888 the New Brunswick Telephone Company was incorporated by the Provincial Legislature and was given an exclusive franchise to provide long-distance service in much of the province.

In 1910, the Maritime Telegraph and Telephone Company (MTT) was incorporated and in 1911, it acquired both the Telephone Company of Prince Edward Island and the Nova Scotia Telephone Company. In 1966, Bell Canada acquired a near-majority interest in both MTT and NBTel but was prevented from taking control by provincial government legislation.

Bell Canada, with revenues in excess of $20 billion a year is the largest telecommunications company in Canada, providing local and long-distance telephone services, wireless phone services, high-speed and wireless Internet services and satellite television services. Bell is owned 100% by BCE and serves most of Ontario and Québec as well as portions of the Northwest Territories and has operations in Manitoba, British Columbia and the Yukon.

Aliant was the third largest telecommunications company in 1999 when it was formed as an amalgamation of the four Atlantic telephone companies: MTT, NBTel, Newfoundland Tel and Island Telephone. In 2006, Aliant was brought under the Bell umbrella. BCE owns about 47% of Aliant and controls its management.

Federal regulatory changes over three decades have opened the field to competition.

In 1977, for example, the CRTC ruled that Bell Canada must provide cable television companies (like Rogers) access to its telephone-poles. In 1979 the CRTC ordered Bell to grant CNCP Telecommunications access to Bell's local switching network to enable them to offer business-communication services in competition with Bell.

In 1979 the CRTC required Bell to provide mobile-telephone companies with access to its switching facilities and in 1982, the CRTC made it possible for customers to purchase their telephones instead of renting from the telephone company.

This week, BCE put itself up for sale. The potential bidders are the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Quebec and the CPP Investment Board. Telus (an amalgam of BCTel and AlbertaTel) is checking the landscape. Calgary-based Shaw Communications is pawing the ground. So too is Rogers Communications.

There are also some American and European predators on the horizon. Why should we care?

Start with NBTel! In the 1990s, NBTel was a technology leader in the telecommunications industry and a driver of economic development in New Brunswick. Amalgamation of the four Atlantic telephone companies under the Aliant banner stalled that energy. Head-office jobs were moved out of the province, senior managers were given early retirement and large-scale telecommunications research slowed to a crawl.

If BCE succumbs to a leveraged buyout, it could be left with an enormous debt; some speculate in excess of $30 billion. (A leveraged buyout occurs when the buyer gains control of a company through the use of borrowed money. Assets of the business being purchased are used as collateral and cash generated by the purchased company is used to finance and repay the debt).

It’s a way for buyers to acquire a company without expending a lot of their own capital.

If the sale of BCE is financed from future earnings, you can be certain that telephone rates in New Brunswick will increase and technology research and development in Canada will be slowed.

If BCE is sold to foreign equity interests, Canadians will lose control of their telecommunications industry, the Toronto Stock Exchange will lose one its best listings and governments will lose a great deal of tax money.

Can we do something about it, probably not, unless we can generate a voice loud enough to force the federal government to intervene on behalf of Canadians?

W.E. (Bill) Belliveau is a Shediac resident and Moncton business consultant. He can be contacted at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and small business owner, operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic. He can be reached by e-mail at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com

Governments are often defined by the decisions they make in the first weeks and months of their administration.

In the first weeks of the Graham administration, the Provincial Government announced new spending programs that responded to its election promises. Good first step.

Next, the Government revealed the results of a government spending analysis that suggested that a ‘business as usual’ budget would result in a $300 to $400 million deficit. Critics immediately declared that such informal audits were standard fare for new governments and meant nothing in respect to the true financial circumstance of the Province.

The former Premier and his former Minister of Finance scoffed at the notion of deficit and assured everyone they had left the Province with a surplus.

The new Minister of Finance disagreed with them and introduced his first Budget in response to the Grant Thornton deficit-warning. Personal and corporate income taxes were increased. Price increases for beer, wine and liquor were signaled when the Minister instructed the New Brunswick Liquor Commission to deliver a $13 million profit.

The Minister of Energy stoked the fire with his declaration that NB Power must pay its way.

Nothing wrong with that, in principle but combined with tax increases, rising gasoline prices and price increases at the liquor store, red flags went up (no pun intended).

All this was happening as an election was going on in the province of Quebec and the Federal Government was delivering its own budget. The federal budget increased transfer payments to Quebec by 30% while restricting New Brunswick to less than a 2% increase. The boost to Quebec allowed the Government of Jean Charest to deliver a $700 million tax-cut to voters in Quebec.

Meanwhile, back in New Brunswick, people were getting antsy about their property taxes as assessments were driving them upwards. Earlier this week, a couple of readers (plural) told me that their 2007 property-tax assessment increased astronomically in just one year.

“Our principal residence assessment went up $150,000, a 76% increase, resulting in a $1,400 boost in our tax bill this year” they said. They went on to say they have not even finished construction of their home which is situated on an erosion plagued waterfront lot (approximately 75ft x 100ft) that has been in their family for 90 years.

They corrected me for having said in an earlier column that “property taxes collected by the Provincial Government were limited to rental properties and second homes (cottages/summer homes).

Apparently, I was wrong. In Local Service Districts, property, taxes are paid to the Provincial Government. According to these folks, only $25 per $100,000 of assessment is returned to the local community. That doesn’t seem fair to me unless the provincial government provides some form of municipal-type service in these communities.

I am not in a position to comment on the merits of individual cases but I do know that people are very upset with the Provincial Government on the matter of property assessments that in turn are leading to exorbitant increases in property taxes. It’s the talk of coffee-shops and water-coolers. Bloated assessments do not have to translate into higher property taxes.

In fact, property tax-rates should drop when assessments rise, at least to a point consistent with inflation.

All of the above leads me to the unfortunate statement “we can afford it”-Victor Boudreau. Can we indeed?

I know Victor Boudreau to be a fine and honorable man. I admire his integrity, his good intentions and his devotion to family. I wonder about the communications advice he has received when I hear statements like “we can afford it”.

Yes some can afford it but for many people, the combination of provincial income tax-increases, beer/liquor price-increases, property-tax increases, rising gasoline prices and pending power-rate increases may prove to be more than they can handle.

On another but related matter, La Caisse Populaire Acadienne Ltée., New Brunswick announced recently that it would take the La Caisse Populaire de Shippagan back into its fold if the provincial government would guarantee its (Shippagan’s) liabilities.

The Shippagan credit union was a problem that had danced with the former Conservative government for the last year or two. The Liberal Government announced a $60 million bail-out package to permit the move. The alternative was an $87 million dollar collapse that would have triggered a 100% call on government guarantees and created a ripple effect throughout the credit union community.

Legislation passed by the Lord government had provided for the 100% guarantee. This compares to bank limits of $100,000 per account.

The water muddies with suggestions of impropriety in Shippagan – 35,000 credit union members in a town of 5,000 people – deposits far in excess of local assets. It gets even muddier when the Leader of the Opposition Conservatives who was the former Minister of Finance threatens this past Thursday to release information that will be damaging to the entire credit union movement and then suggests that if he goes down, he’s taking other people with him.

What is this man hiding?

There is a lot of definition on the provincial table. The time may have come for a judicial inquiry into the La Caisse Populaire de Shippagan and what Mr. Volpe knows or doesn’t know about its operations.

It certainly is time to put a cap on property tax increases (regardless of assessed values) at a rate near inflation.

On the matter of NB Power, may I suggest that rate increases be limited proportionately to increases in the direct cost of fuel and increases in the direct cost of energy replacement (the cost of purchasing electricity outside the province)?

If governments are defined by the decisions they make, this government has a great opportunity to frame such definition with the decisions it makes in the next few days or weeks.

W.E. (Bill) Belliveau is a Shediac resident and Moncton business consultant. He can be contacted at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and small business owner, operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic. He can be reached by e-mail at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com

A few weeks ago, we offered comment on the Provincial Budget.

Indeed, we noted that according to the international accounting firm Grant Thornton, the Province was facing a potential deficit of $300 to $400 million.

Since then we have had a Federal Budget that awarded the Province of Quebec with a $2.3 billion increase in federal transfers and equalization payments. This allowed Premier Charest to announce an immediate $700 million tax cut to pump up his election platform. Instead his platform deflated.

The federal budget offered New Brunswick an additional $26 million in equalization for the fiscal year 2007-08, less than two percent of the amount directed to Quebec. Federal cabinet ministers and provincial opposition leaders have attempted to blurr the distinction between “equalization” and “transfer payments”.

• Transfer payments are paid to all ten provinces in support of health, education and social programs. They are not based on wealth.
• Equalization payments are paid to the less wealthy provinces to help them pay for services that they otherwise could not afford.

Quebec received a huge boost in equalization payments and then gave it away in tax cuts.

Clearly, they didn’t need the increase. Newfoundland and Nova Scotia were blind-sided with equalization caps and the inclusion of 50% of their resource revenues in equalization computations. Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams has gone on the warpath accusing Premier Harper of breaking the offshore accord. Some Newfounlanders are complaining that their loss of equalization funds was linked directly to the Quebec tax break.

In recent weeks, the Times & Transcript has been on a mission to create a tax revolt in New Brunswick. Property assessments have erroneously been added to the tax debate. Assessments are quite different from tax increases.

In New Brunswick, the Provincial Government assesses property value. Municipalities apply tax rates to assessed values. The only taxes collected by the Provincial Government from property are those assigned to rental properties and second residential (cottages/summer homes) properties, not principle residential properties.

There are two issues here: market value assessment should be based on sales transactions, not arbitrary value assessments and secondly, the Provincial Government should not be collecting property taxes.

Provincial taxation on rental properties is a form of double taxation. Taxation on recreational properties is a tax on families and their heritage. One of the beautiful things about New Brunswick is the fact that people come together every summer in their family cottages to celebrate their heritage. Governments that tax them out of existence will not reap the rewards of repatriation or population retention.

In New Brunswick, we have combined increases in personal and business income tax with price increases for beer, wine and liquor. We’re looking at potential increases in electric power rates and many people are facing municipal property tax increases as a result of an escalation in assessment values.

The Government is talking about “self-sufficiency” but there is no definition of self-sufficiency on the table. The concept of increased exports is counter-intuitive when applied to self-sufficiency because trade implies dependency on trading partners. If the definition of self-sufficiency is simply a detachment from equalization payments, we should be clear about it.

The issue of government bailout for the Shippigan Caisse Populaire continues to rankle. The cost is some $60 million comprised of a $31.5 million grant to cover the institution’s debt, $10 million in repayable shares (I would have thought that lost share value would be at the cost and risk of shareholders) and $18.5 million payable to the New Brunswick Deposit Insurance Corporation.

The Lord Government had guaranteed 100% of deposits in all New Brunswick credit unions. Rationale for the Shippigan bailout is that to do otherwise would have been more expensive.

That may be true but…

Credit unions provide a very valuable service in small and rural communities, especially those abandoned by our national banks. That said, they deserve regulation and oversight in much the same way as our banks. The idea that a small town credit union could be allowed to create a provincial liability in the order of $60 million is despicable. The Provincial Government must ensure that credit unions are both regulated and governed in such a way as to not cost taxpayers undue expense and hardship.

On the matter of pending NB Power rate increases and without knowing what they might be, I offer two suggestions: one, that costs of economic development investments be separated from costs of domestic power generation and two, that consumers be offered some form of energy-consumption, price-based offset that would reward them for reduced consumption.

We need to consider some revenue-generating alternatives to income taxes. Income is the money we earn. Tax on income reduces our disposable income. Sales tax is paid only when we elect to purchase something. The first is arbitrary. The second is optional except as it applies to basic necessities.

Maybe we could lower income taxes by adding a percentage point to the GST. Maybe we should be tolling our four lane highways from Amherst to Edmundston and Amherst to St. Stephen. Residents of New Brunswick could be issued a 100 kilometer a day pass to offset work-commutes. Pass-through vehicles would expand our tax-base.

One final item i.e. federal discrimination in respect to provision of 24/7 customs and security services at the Greater Moncton International Airport. A few decades ago, the federal government designated Halifax as the regional airline hub for Atlantic Canada but Moncton had other ideas.

The airport was privatized, a new terminal constructed and today it serves half a million people a year. It is not treated as an equal by our customs service. Moncton is New Brunswick’s principle airport.

Surely it qualifies for equal treatment with Halifax. Our local MPs should be all over this one.

W.E. (Bill) Belliveau is a Shediac resident and Moncton business consultant. He can be contacted at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and small business owner, operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic. He can be reached by e-mail at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com

This week’s column was written in rural Newfoundland.

Yesterday was spent in downtown St. John’s, Newfoundland. I tell you this for two reasons. My perspective on the Quebec election may be distant and ill-informed by isolation and time.

The second is to tell you that Newfoundlanders seem more interested in Premier Danny Williams’ ad in the Globe Mail, railing against the Harper government’s broken promise in respect to the exclusion of offshore oil and gas revenues from the calculation of equalization payments. In this province, everyone is talking about Williams.

Indeed, one fella told me proudly that his premier does not accept a salary and works only for the good of Newfoundlanders. Nobody here seems to be talking about Quebec. So be it!

Here’s my take on the election.

Pollsters correctly forecast that Quebec would elect its first minority government in 130 years. The Liberals dropped from 76 seats to 48. The Parti Quebecoise lost ten seats. Mario Dumont and his Action démocratique du Quebec (ADQ) party jumped from 5 seats to 41 seats. He was the big winner.

Some pundits cast this election as a win for the federalists. In my view, it was a loss for the Liberals. 66.02% of eligible voters voted against the Liberals - Jean Charest hung on to his seat by less than a one percentage point. Others called the election a win for Stephen Harper because it apparently collared small “c” conservative votes.

There was only one winner and that was Mario Dumont. He won because he converted five seats into forty one seats and in the process became the Official Leader of the Opposition. He won because he did not become Premier.

Now, he has an opportunity to recruit quality candidates who will permit him to offer a legitimate government alternative in the next election.

I take issue with those who call this a win for the federalists. Mr. Dumont is a former President of the youth wing of the Quebec Liberal Party and an early federalist. He voted “Yes” in the last referendum. He has disavowed referendum in the short-term but has called for Quebec “autonomy” a Quebec constitution and recognition of Quebec’s unique identity.

Just for the record, Webster defines autonomy as the quality or state of being self-governed; a self-governing state. Sounds like independence or separation to me.

One of the underlying issues in the Quebec election was concern for the accommodation of religious and ethnic minorities in Quebec, (read intolerance for immigrants). Dumont seems to have tapped into that feeling, reminding one of Jacques Parizeau’s outburst the night of his referendum defeat in 1995 when he blamed new Canadians for defeating his referendum. Preservation of the Quebec identity is synonymous with the notion of exclusion. It is symptomatic of insecurity in a Province where the religion and language of history define a people.

Those who want to characterize ascendancy of the ADQ and Mario Dumont as a positive anti-separatist vote should understand that intolerance of immigrants is no different than intolerance of English speaking Canadians except in the fact that it is disguised as a response to physical apparel (turbans, facial coverings, ceremonial swords) and non-traditional religious practices. Quebec nationalism turns on the issue of identity.

Anything that challenges that identity is threatening.

Some might consider the Quebec vote to be a vote for change, I suspect it was more a vote against the arrogance of Jean Charest and Stephen Harper who joined together to offer voters a $700 million tax-cut at the expense of Canada. These are the same two who brought us recognition of the “Quebecois as a nation within Canada”. It will be interesting now to see how fast Mr. Harper puts daylight between himself and Mr. Charest.

Quebec will be in a state of disarray for some time. With no clear majority and no obvious alliances, it will be difficult for the Liberals to govern. The knives will be out for Charest. The PQ will be gunning for Andre Boisclair. Already there is speculation that Gilles Duceppe will be called into service by the Parti Quebecois. Without Duceppe, Mr. Harper could lose Bloc support in Parliament.

Mario Dumont is a Quebec nationalist. The fact that he rejected the PQ challenge of an immediate referendum does not make him a federalist. His platform called for Quebec autonomy and a Quebec constitution, presumably within Canada but not necessarily so. It called for a massive transfer of powers and more money from the federal government.

The suggestion that Mr. Harper is a winner in this election is based on the premise that Dumont is a fiscal conservative. The emergence of a small “c” conservative vote in Quebec would seem to bode well for a potential surge in votes for the federal Conservative Party. Mr. Harper may believe that conservatives have made a break-through in Quebec on the coat-tails of Mario Dumont but my guess is that he will ultimately be treated by Quebec in much the same manner as was Jean Charest.

In fact, the Quebec election result may have been an accident of history.

It’s likely that Quebecers did not believe Mario Dumont could win the election and therefore felt safe in parking their vote with the ADQ. That happened in Ontario with the provincial Liberals in 1988 when David Peterson won a minority government and then went on to win a majority in the next election.

It happened four years later, when Bob Rae won a majority from Peterson. If Mario Dumont conducts himself as a premier in waiting over the next few months and Jean Charest fails to connect with Quebec voters, Dumont will become the next premier.

W.E. (Bill) Belliveau is a Shediac resident and Moncton business consultant. He can be contacted at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and small business owner, operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic. He can be reached by e-mail at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com