Dear Sir or Madam;

I am writing as a TELUS residential customer, to comment on the Notice to

Customers regarding Price Cap Review and Related Issues Public Notice CRTC

2001-37. The Notice states, in part, that "TELUS has also proposed that it

have the flexibility to raise rates for local service (including extended

area service) by up to $3 per month per year to a maximum monthly rate of

$35 per month for residential customers." I am opposed to the CRTC giving

TELUS permission to do this.

I currently pay for "Monthly local services" $22.86 a month. Three dollars

more would be a 13% increase. Consumer price inflation in Canada over the

past year has been just 2.6%. Producer prices have risen only 0.9%. The

Economist newspaper poll (Sep 1, 2001) forecasts that consumer prices will

rise 2.2% in 2002. I suggest that TELUS be permitted to increase local

service rates by not more than the increase in their own cost of providing

local service. (If that is all that this proposal is meant to cover, then I

would like to see the TELUS financial projections that demonstrate that.)

This would help to moderate inflation and avoid taking a nasty bite out of a

fragile economy poised on the brink of recession.

As a self-employed contractor, I too would like to have the "flexibility" to

increase my billing rate by 13% per year while the general price level rises

by just 2%, but I don't enjoy a monopoly like TELUS. Please don't hand over

to TELUS $36 a year of my money and that of millions of other consumers

unless you are quite certain that they can't operate without it and you can

prove that to me too.

Thank you;

Ken Waldron

250-653-4795

169 Seymour Heights

Salt Spring Island, BC V8K 2B6