As Mr. Connell said, I am responsible for policy and communications for Broadband Canada: Connecting Rural Canadians. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.
As you know, the Economic Action Plan provides for $225 million in funding for Industry Canada to design and implement a strategy to extend broadband coverage to as many unserved and underserved homes as possible. Broadband communication service means a minimum downloading speed of 1.5 megabytes per second. We will therefore be providing a unique stimulus to support the expansion of infrastructure in regions where it is not profitable for the public sector to go ahead using only its own resources.
The program is technology-neutral and will accept a variety of wireline and wireless technology solutions, such as fibre, DSL, cable, and wireless networks, including satellite.
Broadband Canada will fund up to 50% of eligible project costs on a one-time basis—a one-time non-repayable contribution—and the projects will be selected through a competitive application process.
First nations communities can apply for more than 50% federal funding. While they can only apply for 50% from the Broadband Canada program, they can apply for the other 50% funding from programs such as INAC's first nations infrastructure fund or from Infrastructure Canada.
The first step of the program was an extensive mapping of current broadband availability across the country. This extensive exercise was undertaken in consultation with provinces, territories, the CRTC, and other federal partners, using publicly available data.
On July 6 we launched a website inviting individual Canadians and ISPs to validate the mapping data we'd compiled. Over 2,100 individual Canadians provided feedback and 65 ISPs provided updated coverage information to the program. On July 30, Prime Minister Harper announced the program and unveiled the national broadband map in Adstock, Quebec. Using this mapping information, we can avoid funding projects in areas that already have broadband service or that will have broadband service shortly through other initiatives.
For the purposes of the program, the country was divided into 64 geographic service areas using census division data from Statistics Canada, as well as our own information from the mapping exercise.
Applicants must demonstrate they have a long-term sustainability strategy for the broadband service, for a minimum of five years, and have a proven track record of project management in the deployment of broadband initiatives.
Where provincial initiatives already exist to bring broadband connectivity to 100% within the next 12 to 18 months, no eligible service areas were defined.
According to the CRTC, 6% of Canadians currently do not have access to broadband service. That figure jumps to 22% for Canadians living in rural areas, and our mapping data indicate that 34% of the population of the north—all of whom are in Nunavut or the Northwest Territories—are either unserved or underserved.
Most of those 34% are underserved, meaning they have access to Internet connectivity, but at speeds between dial-up and 1.5 megabytes per second. This is a result of satellite investments from the national satellite initiative, which had been funded from Industry Canada, and now by the Canadian Space Agency and Infrastructure Canada over the past five years.