Industry committee  The CRTC has already established a 50-millisecond minimum service quality standard. It's not implemented, but they have established it. That minimum needs to be low. It cannot be too high, because speeds are going to vary. You could set a minimum. Let's say it's 5 megabits per second.

Industry committee  That's something that the CRTC can figure out, the implementation of it. The problem is that the transparency, as you mentioned, goes only so far, so whatever target is advertised as minimum, the verification process has to be set up. For example, for the CCTS to validate the complaint, it can have a rule—CRTC can impose it or CCTS can come up with it themselves—so that you have to show that your contract says “100 megabits” and you've done 10 tests: One of them shows 100 megabits and nine of them show 50 megabits.

Industry committee  The minimum speeds would be easy to incorporate into this bill.

Industry committee  You could have minimum speed and then advertised speed, because they're not the same thing. Speeds vary. It's a dynamic. It's not like electricity that you're being charged for by volume. The electricity model you used.... Telecom providers would love nothing better than to use that kind of meter billing.

Industry committee  They have different approaches. Some countries have a regulator like the CRTC. In Germany, they have kept the power themselves. The CRTC of Germany deals with complaints at the individual level and moves towards systematic fines when it doesn't happen in a systematic manner. Individual cases don't really incentivize bad actors to do better, because they are very small fines, essentially.

Industry committee  Well, you have speeds. I think the point that we should also mention is that the reliability of services has become more important. Speeds are important, and bandwidth, but there are also things like latency and jitter, these technical terms that enable video streaming. The U.S. is adding latency.

Industry committee  This bill has nothing to do with wireless services. That's just an obfuscation. This is about fixed networks. As you've heard and as I've explained, as has Mr. Maker, the Internet Code does not incorporate any elements against misleading advertisements or service quality levels.

Industry committee  On the question of the fraud calls, I want to correct you on that. One of the problems with the implementation of all of those anti-fraud systems is the false positives they create. It's true that they can stop certain fraudulent calls, but one has to be very careful about not blocking legitimate communications.

Industry committee  Well, maybe there will be a cultural change. There was a cultural change that was happening at the CRTC for a few years. Then it was reversed, unfortunately, and that's why we've ended up with the highest prices in the world.

Industry committee  Maxime Bernier's policy direction was the start of this process. Then the previous government, by the end of their term, realized that this was a mistake and tried to reverse course.

Industry committee  If I may, there is a regulatory framework. Parliament has already provided a regulatory framework. The CRTC has the authority to do this, but they have not done it. For example, in 2019, when they were adopting the Internet Code, they explicitly excluded what this bill is trying to do.

Industry committee  No. You're essentially complementing and giving direction and democratic accountability over one element of the regulatory authority that you have provided to the CRTC, but the CRTC has forborne from applying its authority for some reason or another; we don't know why.

Industry committee  Technically and theoretically, you could develop a system that does that, but I think that it could be very complex in practice.

Industry committee  I'm sorry. I'm not sure if that was mentioned in that 2015 paper. It was a while back. Yes, definitely, and minimum service quality standards are being implemented in various countries. The CRTC already has worked on this issue to some extent in their technical committee. They have a good understanding of what it could be, but they just haven't implemented it.

Industry committee  It would be a big research project to go through the different countries and put it together, but I can direct you to the European Commission's regulations, article 4.1(d) and 4.1(e), if you like.