Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Nov. 7th, 2018

[Dean Proctor]

Oh yes, for the most part, we know. But as a simple example, Nunavut did not have cellular service in 18 of the 25 communities until this year when we completed that work.

There are some 89 expert reports from a couple of years ago from the CRTC. I think it would be a little higher than this, but we've plotted that about 150 permanent communities, 450 reserves, are north of 55. As per the CRTC report of a couple of years ago, within that, some 89 are completely satellite dependent and another 109 are underserviced or unserved by communication services. We identified that and have developed solutions, cookie cutter solutions, if you will where you can get into them.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

I haven't been to Industry Canada's website for a while. I couldn't go on and look at a map and say that if I go to Rankin Inlet or to this community, this is what's there. I couldn't do that right now.

[Dean Proctor]

It's not necessarily that user friendly. You'd be better off talking to me. I hate to say it that way.

And I hate to say this, but it's more user-friendly for people in the industry like me if you're looking at trying to find the density, the availability, the number of people who may be there. But for the most part, very important parts of this country are underconnected, underserved, and in some cases, completely unserved.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

But it would be tough for me to get a list right now through the Government of Canada.

[Dean Proctor]

I don't want to say that, because I could probably give you some names of people who would be able to help you work through that.

As I say, it's really been destined more for spectrum auctions. For example, the whole country has been cordoned off into little hexagons and octagons for bidding purposes, and then you can find the population as well as the equipment in place. But it isn't always fully accurate because of the nature of the areas we're dealing with.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

In the communities you serve, is the broadband such that you can have an effective telehealth system?

[Dean Proctor]

Yes and no. It depends on what telehealth you mean. If you want to do remote-area diagnostics where it's extremely capacity-requiring, I would say no. That is something where we need much greater capacity than we have today. If you're doing something like telepsychiatry where you need video conferencing, yes, we have solutions that are working quite well on that today. They are still data pigs, though, and it's expensive. When I talk about the backbone, that's exactly what I'm talking about.

We have in place in Grise Fiord today—population 120—the exact same mobile technology you'd find in downtown Ottawa or downtown Toronto. That's what we call the last mile. Our problem is, how do you get out? How do the people in that community connect to the Internet? How do they connect to their psychiatrist? How do doctors transmit the necessary data to do telehealth? That's the backbone, and that's where we need to focus. That's what has to be shared and open.

The way the system has been working to date—and the policy is not supposed to be this way; it's just the way it's working—is that everybody gets a little bit for a little bit of backbone, and nobody's sharing the larger backbone, whereas the capacity itself can be shared on a millisecond by millisecond basis. Nobody needs that much all the time. If you bring it together, people are working on a much larger pipe that they use when they need it, if that makes sense.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

I want to pick up on what my colleague, Yvonne Jones, said about the equipment and how we know....

Moreover, because of the climate, are there extraordinary challenges that the south might not face in terms of the optimal equipment?

[Dean Proctor]

Yes, and I might be able to help answer your earlier question, too.

Fibre optics is wonderful, but it needs a physical landing point. It needs a physical location. The beauty of satellite—which is important for the mining sector as well—is that it covers a large swath. So when I talked about sharing a pipe, it's not only sharing it between two service providers in the same community, it's also sharing it on a dynamic basis between multiple communities. That could be a mine site, or it could be multiple communities in Labrador that aren't connected to a fibre grid.

So, while everybody looks at fibre as the gold standard, satellite is also a gold standard, depending on where you are, and in Canadian communities it's big.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

MP Rachel Blaney, you may take the questions now.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you all for being here today.

I'm going to start with Mr. Proctor. I live very nicely in the south and I don't have a lot of snow, but huge areas of my riding have absolutely no cell reception or Internet. It's a huge issue for some of our communities.

One of the things you talked about was the ability of your company to be innovative, to have innovative people and software. You also talked about making it easier for smaller providers. I've definitely heard from those small providers in my region and the absolute challenges they face because of the larger company, Telus, in my region.

Do you have a model that makes sense? Do you have ideas from other places around the world? What works for these underserved areas that are vast in size and need those specific services?

[Dean Proctor]

I've left some documents behind with the clerk.

We have something called the Qimirluk solution. Qimirluk is the Inuktitut word for backbone. You focus on communities. It may be a rural area, but we try to deliver into a central hub and beam out from there, or allow any number of service providers to connect into that central hub.

So I suggest you invest in the gateway, where everybody can co-locate their equipment or connect their own equipment by microwave or fibre, and bring it out to those relatively close-by areas that need the coverage, either wirelessly or by fibre.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Is there a model where that sharing is actually working? I'm just curious. You were talking about Bell earlier. Is there a place where that's actually happening, where that sharing is happening?

[Dean Proctor]

Yes, it's working in most of southern Canada, where fibre is, as long as the regulator actually intervenes—in this case the regulator needs to be the Government of Canada—and makes certain that there's proper access to that for third-party service providers.

You have to divide “backbone” from “local”. You're talking about the local providers who want proper access to that backbone. There has been a lot of progress made in southern Canada for proper access to the big backbone. What we're worried about now is different rules that apply to outlying areas, more remote areas, where that backbone isn't being shared the way it should be.

So, yes, there is a model. It's in southern Canada and it needs to be applied all over Canada.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

One of the things you talked about.... I don't know if I heard correctly, but we've heard a lot from other witnesses about the challenges of getting the right people working in the right areas, because it's hard in some of the more rural and remote communities.

You talked as well about your people. I'm wondering how you are doing to recruit and retain people. What sort of methods are working well, and what areas are of concern to you?

[Dean Proctor]

Thank you for that.

We're a little bit of an offbeat company. We have three rules: Will you love the job? Can you do the job? Can we stand to spend time with you? We say it a little differently, but that's the idea.

In each one of our served communities, we have community service providers. Some of them have been with us since the beginning, which was 2005. They are local agents who do shipping and receiving. They receive in all the equipment. They have to sign up customers. They handle customer complaints. They shovel the snow from around the shelters in the winter time. They do fixes when fixes are needed. They're absolutely essential to our activity.

We train those people; they're part of the team, even though they are agents. As I say, by investing a lot of our top-end revenue, not bottom-line revenue, into these community service providers, we're able to recruit and retain. We really profoundly believe in investing in ongoing, constant training, not only in our community service providers but in all of our people.

We try to make an enjoyable workplace. At the same time, it is one big team, one big family. It's constant learning and constant investment in ideas, and encouraging that.

I really don't know how else to do it, apart from that.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Fair enough.

I have another question. I didn't hear this in these presentations, but we've heard many times before that housing is a huge infrastructure challenge that can result in multiple challenges.

I'm wondering if you have a sense of that, as well, in the work that you do.

[Dean Proctor]

We absolutely do.

I'm going to have go a bit off the track of telecom, but infrastructure is housing. It's heat and power, and it's telecoms. Our energy initiatives are based in large part on that. Our second-largest cost, apart from our backbone, our satellite, is electricity.

In a lot of the communities that we're dealing with, housing is a huge problem. In fact, whereas the Canadian average is like 2.2 people per home, in almost all of Nunavut it's in excess of six or seven. There's a huge housing shortage. However, in a lot of the communities, there's not enough power being produced to build new houses. How can you heat the houses, if the power plant can't produce enough electricity to heat them?

As we speak, we are working toward solutions. We can put in place micro-grid energy, which can provide not only electricity very cost effectively, but also distributed heating. That will help facilitate putting in new homes. We're working with Nunavut Construction Corp in some discussions there.

It's a real issue. I mean, when we talk about holistic solutions, living in a crowded place is also part of a mental health issue, a physical health issue. It leads to the spread of tuberculosis. It leads to the need for telehealth. Housing really goes to the core of a lot of this.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Yes.

[Dean Proctor]

We are trying to develop, in our own little world, holistic solutions for all of that.

It's a very good question. It's like the knee bone is connected to the thigh bone is connected to the hip bone. We have to look at this holistically. It's infrastructure, globally.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you.

I'm wondering if any of you have any comments around housing, and if that's a challenge for any of the work that's being done in that area for you and your folks that you represent.

[Lisa McDonald]

Sure.

Housing and any of the socio-economic challenges that are faced by northern communities have an impact on our sector.

It's important for us to be able to have meaningful and active participation in the well-paying jobs, and all of the different opportunities that our sector can offer to communities and people in the north.

However, it is critical that there are those fundamental investments in communities, in things such as housing, education, health, to ensure that populations are able to participate in a meaningful way.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Thank you.

The questioning now moves to MP Yvonne Jones, who I understand might be willing to share a couple of questions with the chair.

[Yvonne Jones]

Absolutely, with pleasure.

I'm going to see if Mr. Proctor wants to expand on the question that I asked him. I know Ms. McLeod gave you an opportunity, but there may be something else.

We'll do that before we move on.

[Dean Proctor]

In our business, there's a saying that you don't buy technology, you just lease it. We're constantly having to reinvest.

Fibre, as I say, is viewed as the gold standard for backbone connectivity, but it has the unfortunate problem of needing a physical connection. In a lot of the communities we're dealing with, because of the distance factor, the climate, the difficulty of landing...let's say it's a submarine cable, then you have the problem of possibly being subject to cuts. If a fibre is cut, and you have to wait nine months to be able to repair that fibre, you'd better have some kind of a backup plan. That means that satellite will continue to be useful.

The best news, though, is that technologies are evolving so quickly that there are a lot of new satellite technologies in place, coming online, and that we believe are going to continue to serve the populations well.

We're not there yet. The problem is that, at this point, we're now at or have a critical backbone infrastructure deficit for the digital deficit. We need to figure out some solutions in the short to medium term while we're waiting for these gold standard fibre...or new low earth orbit satellites to come along, which won't be for another four, five or six years.