Preventing domestic mergers, and ensuring domestic competition exists are viable alternatives.

With viable alternatives available, when it comes to domestic telco and networking, you want domestic control. A nation is benefited by domestic ownership of its own infrastructure.

This is inline with domestic food production, manufacturing of defense products, transportation infrastructure, and on and on.

Domestic control is an aspect of sovereignty.

Now again, I want competition. The problem isn't foreign competition, it's a lack of domestic.

The Harper Conservatives worked on this, limiting spectrum auction to induce competition and so on.

I suspect someone had a pet peeve, re domestic cost of services. One thing about government, is that often politicians get into the politicking business because something pissed them off.

So I suspect someone was cheesed at costs, or customer service, and made it their thing. Sadly, it was dropped by the next government.

Another example would be the Trudeau Liberals overhauling the entire ombudsman process for banks, along with intense investigation into retail banking processes.

Prior, the ombudsman was an escalation process that ended up at a provincial ombudsman's office... jointly owned by the banks!

Again, I expect someone in the current government was cheesed at banking chicanery.

Regardless, we can get competition without foreign competitors. It just takes a government caring enough.

And it would take just as much push to drop foreign ownership requirements, as to limit spectrum, prevent mergers, etc.