Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good evening. My name is Andre Arbour. I'm the acting director general of telecommunications and Internet policy at Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada.
Clause 203 is an amendment to the Telecommunications Act intended to help facilitate the coordination of broadband infrastructure funding. The Government of Canada has a number of programs that help support broadband infrastructure expansion in underserved areas that are not served by the market. This includes, for instance, the universal broadband fund out of ISED.
The CRTC, as the sector regulator, also has a broadband fund that stems from its authorities under the Telecommunications Act. The CRTC fund is a bit different from your typical programming. Since the CRTC is an arm's-length regulatory tribunal, the fund is supported out of a levy on the telecommunications industry, so it does not come out of the CRF.
The amendments here are intended to help facilitate coordination with the CRTC fund. If passed, they would do so in two ways.
One would be to limit the nature of appeals that could be filed by parties regarding CRTC broadband projects. There are currently three avenues of appeal under the Telecommunications Act. These avenues of appeal are generally intended for broad-based complex regulatory decisions that affect the entire industry. The concern would be that if these were applied to individual broadband projects, they would just slow down the rollout of those projects unnecessarily.
The amendment would remove two of those avenues, to the Governor in Council and to the CRTC itself. Applicants would still have recourse to the Federal Court of Appeal if they wished to challenge a decision.
The second outcome would be to facilitate the sharing of broadband project information between the CRTC and other federal departments and agencies, and with provinces and territories. This would better facilitate the rollout of broadband projects.
Finally, clause 204 would just correct an imprecision in the French language of that section to better reflect the English and the intent of that section.
Thank you.