Canadian Heritage Committee on Oct. 26th, 2010

[Ian Wilson]

Let me just indicate that I'm not comparing this to transit, to rail, or to all the other pressures, hospital care, education, that are on the agenda of government. I'm simply saying there is room, there is space in all of this, and hopefully in a stimulus package there is room to put it in the context of more of a capital project than simply as an out-of-pocket expenditure. It's something of benefit long term, and if done properly it's going to last, and last well. I think with the Canadian library groups that we have, it will last.

I think it's important that we're trying to create some space here to recognize that. I believe you may be mistaken in saying that entire National Archives is digitized. If it is, something really marvellous happened in the last year since I left that institution. Perhaps 1% might be digitized at this point, and that's millions of pages put up online. In fact, when I left we were having problems getting enough electricity to power the servers, because the demand on our servers was heavy. I believe you may have misheard what my successor said in terms of the digitization of our collection. There's still an awful lot to do there.

I'm just saying, let's have some space here, recognize it's a capital project, and recognize it has an extraordinary impact. In a knowledge economy, to get our intellectual capital available, it will have a whole range of impacts: lifelong learning students and the kind of research and development we need to do. The innovation and creativity is going to come from this experience. I'm saying we do it once, we do it well. This isn't a long-term project. It's do it once.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

I agree with you 100%. I think responsible government looks at all of the responsibilities that it has and invests in that fashion. That's my point.

Now, with respect to the electricity supply, I will write a letter to Dalton McGuinty immediately and suggest that we do something about that.

[Ian Wilson]

Actually, the main building is in Gatineau.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Oh, my goodness. This is scandalous, Hydro-Québec, oh my goodness.

[Ian Wilson]

It simply indicates the extent of the demand for access to this kind of material. Canadians are looking for it. I hope we can find some time, the occasion.... We can get the private sector. I'm interested now that I've moved out. The private sector is willing to help on this one. There's some serious help there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Mr. Del Mastro and Mr. Wilson.

The last member is Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to follow up on my colleague because I think he might have been a little too defensive about what we do in terms of building a strategy, especially with the stimulus.

CRTC is in my hometown of Timmins and they're looking at the obligation to serve. I have areas that are on dial-up; I have areas that have no Internet access whatsoever. I'm being told that 1.5 megabits is a good standard for broadband in northern Ontario. Our northern college can't deliver educational resources at less than 5 megabits capacity. Then I find out that countries like Australia--very large, very rural--are looking to have 93% hooked up online, the rest, 7%, hooked up by mobile. They're talking of having 100-megabits-per-second capacity. We're looking at Sweden....

In terms of where we are in a digital realm, is it sufficient, given the vast geography of Canada, to assume that there's a market case to be made to get to the kinds of speeds our competitors are already way out in front on? Or do we need a major investment, a major plan, and to set major benchmarks to ensure that the rural parts of our country, the northern parts of our country, the isolated parts of our country, are not left to lag behind in terms of competition? I throw it out to anyone.

[Michael Hennessy]

It sounds like one I might want to catch.

The nice thing about the hearing today in Timmins, as a starting point, was that the company Barrett Xplore, which is launching a new satellite service that will be available in 2011, promised that their new satellites will have sufficient capacity to serve all what are considered to be the unserved and underserved households in the country, at speeds of 3, 5, 10, and 25 megabits per second for households and businesses. It's not 100%, but it's very good. So I think that is critical.

Wireless is starting to deliver mobile capacity. I think where we will see gaps in the country, because I think that will take care of a lot of residential need, will be in actually getting the fibre networks or satellite or wireless connections between cities. I think that's the biggest barrier. It's cheap to build in a town if you can get the facilities out there, and I think that will probably be the next hurdle to overcome.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Hennessy.

I think Mr. Coates has something to add. Go ahead, Professor Coates.

[Dr. Kenneth Coates]

I'm from Waterloo and was actually raised in the Yukon, so this one strikes really close to home in terms of access.

Canada has a surprisingly large number of people who live in rural and small-town areas. What I would also suggest we be very careful of is that the Internet is actually really harming a lot of small towns and rural areas, particularly on the commercial side. It's really interesting watching, as the Internet comes into communities, how you can actually buy things from Canadian Tire, you can buy things from Future Shop. We're starting to see some real bleeding of some of the small towns. It's already happening in these small towns, and you'll know this well.

We actually need to know an awful lot more about the full impact of the Internet on small-town areas. If you go back ten years, we were talking about the fact that the Internet would make it possible for professionals to live anywhere. Artists could live in these small communities and we would see a revitalization of small towns. Statistically, it's not happening. What's happening is people are living an hour away from a major city. So they'll live in Waterloo and come into Toronto twice a week or something like that. They're not actually moving to Moosonee and using the fact that the Internet's available there to do their work from a much greater distance.

So I'm with you on the need to provide the service, but I think we need to be really open-minded as to what the full impact is going to be and the effect it's going to have.

On the educational side, it's phenomenally rich in potential. You can change the whole experience of high school and elementary education in small communities, if we can get it right.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Mr. Angus and Professor Coates.

Before we adjourn, I just want to draw members' attention to the fact that on Friday we received notices of two order-in-council appointments. One is Daniel Jean, who's the new Deputy Minister of Canadian Heritage, and the second is Nicholas Offord, who's the new vice-chairman of the board of trustees of the Canadian Museum of Nature. If members wish to review these appointments, you have up to February 18, 2011, to do so, as per your right under Standing Orders 110 and 111. Just bring it up at our next discussion of future committee business.

I want to thank our witnesses for their testimony and for appearing in front of us today.

Without further ado, this meeting is adjourned.