As it turns out, I am a Bell retail customer being held hostage by their refusal to engage in seemingly any settlement-free peering with other Canadian networks. I am only their customer because the third-party providers indicated that they were unable to provide service despite Bell DSL service being subject to local-loop unbundling. As the monopoly incumbent that has received significant subsidy to develop their services, I believe they should have a duty to peer at not-for-profit Canadian internet exchanges that meet minimum traffic and peer diversity thresholds.
I agree in that the Canadian ISP market has had a rough ride for a long time. Until the mid 2000s when Cogent and other folks (GTT) rolled into Canada, TELUS, Bell and other companies were charging obscene rates for IP transit.
For several years the TELUS and Bell peering PNIs (OC12s back then) would run hot regularly in domestic Canada - for years.
You'll never get them to peer openly, but at best you can get them to offer market rates for paid peer (which is what folks have tried to do in the US).