- Title: Rogers v. Rogers: The Battle for Control of Canada’s Telecom Empire
- Author: Alexandra Posadzki
- Genre: Non-fiction
- Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
- Pages: 416
From time to time, the gods come down from Olympus to treat us mere mortals. Sometimes it’s to disperse some bits of largesse, other times it’s to praise the labour of those who make Olympus possible in the first place. Every so often, it’s to publicly feud with one another. And so it was throughout the past few years, as Canadians witnessed the scions of the Rogers family, heirs to the communications empire founded by their father, duke it out with one another with one embarrassing swing after another.
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Let’s start by recognizing that Canada is made up of corporate oligopolies. Banks, airlines, grocers and telecommunications firms mark the worst offenders. Consumers have little love and less respect for these industrial giants, rightfully picking up on the fact that, as mere bit players in the great drama of Canada’s corporate ruling class, consumer concerns are incidental to the bottom lines: profit and power.
In Rogers v. Rogers: The Battle for Control of Canada’s Telecom Empire, Globe and Mail journalist Alexandra Posadzki tells the story of the public feud and struggle amongst the Rogers family over the direction of the company after the death of its founder, Ted Rogers. The book is preceded by a quotation from King Lear, a comparison nearly as inevitable as one to the HBO hit Succession. Posadzki at once tells the story of a family, an industry and Canada itself – while never straying far from the reality of how oligopoly shapes itself and, then, shapes the rest of us.
In depth and detail, Posadzki chronicles the melodrama between Edward Rogers and his allies, on the one hand, and two of his sisters, his mother and their allies on the other. Caught up in the story are other corporate and political luminaries, including John Tory, who resigned as Toronto mayor in the wake of a sex scandal as the corporate drama unfolded. Tory worked for Rogers in the 1990s and, later, became an adviser to the Rogers Control Trust, which features prominently in the book.
The proximate cause of the Rogers rift was an attempt by Edward to remove one CEO, Joe Natale, and replace him with another, Tony Staffieri. As the controlling shareholder of Rogers Communications Inc., it was, it turns out, Edward’s right to use his power to do whatever it took to get his way within the boundaries of arcane corporate law. But beyond the immediate cause of the squabble are deeper needs for control, which serves to remind that the powerful as a class are united against those who do not enjoy their privilege, but they often end up internally divided against their own.
Rogers v. Rogers opens with a death bed scene, the matriarch of the family, Loretta, dying and Edward shut out from her bedside. This story evokes, perhaps despite the reader’s best resistance, pathos. With the skill of a good storyteller, Posadzki’s subjects come to life in three dimensions such that even one inclined to disregard or discount the pains of the privileged and entitled can’t help but feel sadness or pity as the players fight, suffer, sunder relationships and even die.
Beyond the personal struggles of the subjects, Posadzki’s writing on the inner workings of the telecommunications industry ensures the book is far more than an accounting of a soap-operatic affair that often seems better fit for the gossip pages than the business section. She covers the family feud well, but equally well, and detailed, is her account of the recent Rogers-Shaw merger, which further consolidated an already cozy industry, putting consumers at risk for price hikes and workers at risk of layoffs – both of which came to pass.
Posadzki has written an incisive and compelling melodrama – and an industry primer that ought to be read by anyone who wonders just how Canada’s telecommunications industry works – or doesn’t – and how Canadian public policy and federalism conditions it. From the scourge of dual class shares to regulatory review to board struggles to how physical networks work and beyond, the book moves seamlessly between technical, business, legal and interpersonal details while remaining interesting, informative and accessible. That’s an achievement.
The story of the Rogers feud is a blood boiler, not only because of the cut-throat manoeuvres of the subjects, but because of the absurdity of the telecom industry itself, which is rife with toxic and predatory relationships, not the least of which is between service providers and the customers they wring for every penny. Nonetheless, Posadzki keeps a fair distance between herself as the writer and the feelings her story must conjure up. Call it the skill of a reporter, but she leaves the reader to draw their own judgments and conclusions beyond those offered by the executives, politicians, lawyers and journalists she quotes.
Keeping some distance was a wise choice. The story doesn’t require the heavy hand of the author to push the reader in one direction or another. The reader can decide whether the telecom oligopoly ought to be dismantled (yes), whether the battles of rich people are ultimately more enraging or pathetic (statistical tie), if we desperately need corporate governance reform (yes), or if industry has captured politicians and regulators and left the rest of us in the lurch (yes).
For years to come, Rogers v. Rogers will stand as a chronicle of a critical moment in the history of Canada’s telecom industry, an embarrassing spectacle in the annals of the Rogers family and an account of how the country ended up with the communications oligopoly it seems to be stuck with for the foreseeable future. There will be more books to write. But this one will remain a must-read.