It's even worse then you think. The CRTC, as part of the way it is organized, is actually headed by ex-directors of the telecommunications companies.
When a company wants to add more charges to fleece customers it usually follow this flow:
1. Apply to CRTC
2. CRTC posts public comments
3. CRTC ignores 99% of the against comments and grants between 30 and 50% of the request
4. Provider appeals
5. CRTC restarts the process, media by then has started ignoring the issue at point 1
6. CRTC grants the appeal, keeping some elements "for further review"
7. CRTC accepts the last elements after the "further review", thus the telcos get their pie and CRTC saves face.
As for choice, I'm living in suburbia of Montreal. 2nd biggest city of Canada.
We have 2 providers for the infrastructure: Bell and Videotron.
Videotron started usage based billing years ago, they also monitor connections and send you bitchy emails if you dare use P2P or BitTorrent. They are also owned by Quebecor, a major media conglomerate.
The only 2 "competitors" I know of are SkyNetCanada (800$ setup fee + 100$/month for 3mbps) and FibreNoire, which would be happy to get service to my house if I pay the build fee (10000$+).