Industry and Technology Committee on Sept. 24th, 2025

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Hello everyone.

Good afternoon.

I hope you have had a great week.

We have some guests here with us today in both the first and second hours.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

For our witnesses, if you're not using your translator and it is plugged in, keep it on the sticker in front of you, please. We do that to protect the health and safety of our interpreters.

Colleagues, the first hour today is to hear from officials from the CRTC. This was something the committee felt was important in our first meeting last week. The second hour will be the commencement of our study on productivity. At that point, we will need to very briefly suspend in order to accommodate the technological provisions that need to be put in place, as our guest will be joining us virtually.

Having said all of this, I would like to welcome a couple of folks here today.

I can remember in university knowing what CRTC was but not knowing the actual long form. I like that it's all coming full circle now and I have it here in front of my nose. We have, from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, Vicky Eatrides, who is the chairperson and the chief executive officer; Scott Hutton, who is the vice-president for consumer, analytics and strategy; and Scott Shortliffe, who is the vice-president for broadcasting.

Madam Eatrides, as the commissioner, I'm going to turn it over to you.

You have upwards of five minutes, give or take a little bit, if necessary, for opening remarks. We will then enter into a variety of lines of questioning, which have been divided in accordance with the seating in Parliament. That questioning will begin with my colleagues from the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party and the Bloc, and we will rotate from there.

If you have any questions at any point, please don't hesitate to ask. I will remind you that all questions and responses come through the chair.

With that, Madam Eatrides, I turn the floor over to you. Welcome to the industry committee.

[Vicky Eatrides, Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission]

Good afternoon, and thank you very much for inviting us to join you today.

I would like to acknowledge that we are appearing here on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people.

I am pleased to be joined by Scott and Scott, to make things easier or, perhaps, more complicated. Scott Shortliffe is head of broadcasting at the CRTC, and Scott Hutton is head of consumer, analytics and strategy.

Before we get into the committee members' questions, perhaps I could share a bit of context about the CRTC and some of the work we have been doing.

To start with a quick overview, the CRTC is an independent, quasi-judicial tribunal that regulates the communications sector in the public interest. We hold consultations on telecommunications and broadcasting matters, and we make decisions that are based on the public record.

The commission consists of nine members. There's a chairperson, a vice-chairperson for broadcasting and a vice-chairperson for telecommunications, and we have six regional commissioners who are located across the country. The commission is supported by a team of expert staff, who help us make informed decisions. We are moving quickly to make those decisions, because we know that everybody needs certainty with respect to the regulatory regime. At the same time, we're consulting broadly, because we know that better policy happens when we listen to individuals, businesses and organizations that help bring diverse voices into the conversation.

With that in mind, I'd like to talk to you about some of the work that we're doing to give Canadians a chance to tell their stories and to discover, watch and listen to content that interests them.

Through the amended Broadcasting Act, Parliament has mandated us to establish a modern broadcasting framework and ensure that online streaming supports Canadian and indigenous content.

One of the first important decisions we made under the amended act was to require that online streaming services contribute to areas of immediate need, such as local news, French-language content and indigenous content. These contributions were expected to inject roughly $200 million into the broadcasting system each year.

Our work continues. For example, since this decision was published, we've taken steps to support local news, especially in small markets where the options are limited.

Our public consultations with various government authorities are ongoing, and we will be publishing decisions this fall that will introduce significant changes to the broadcasting system.

That is a glimpse into our work on the broadcasting side.

On the telecommunications side, we have heard how critical high-quality Internet and cellphone services are for employment opportunities, education, health care, safety, connecting to loved ones, and so much more. As an example, just last week my colleagues and I met with an indigenous-led non-profit community group in Winnipeg, which shared with us the challenges that its community members are facing because of a lack of what they call “meaningful connectivity”, due, in large part, to affordability issues. We know that this problem is not unique to Winnipeg; we have heard the same thing across the country, and I'm sure that committee members have heard that as well.

We are doing our part to help address Internet and cellphone affordability and connectivity. For Internet services, we provided competitors with the ability to deliver more choice for Canadians, and lower prices, by allowing them to sell plans using the networks of the large telephone companies. More than a dozen companies are already using that new framework to offer new Internet options to consumers. For cellphone services, we are allowing competitors to operate on the networks of large cellphone providers, and competitors are now offering Canadians cellphone plans in new regions. According to StatsCan data, prices for cellphone services fell by 16.7% between 2023 and 2024.

At the same time, we want to ensure that we have a healthy and innovative industry. To that end, we put measures in place to make sure that companies continue to invest in high-quality networks.

That includes fair rates, so that large companies are paid for the cost of building fibre networks, and we delayed competitive access to brand-new fibre until 2029.

As we continue to promote competition and investment in Internet and cell phone services, we are also doing our part to help connect rural, remote and indigenous communities across Canada.

In 2019, the CRTC launched a broadband fund as a small part of a broad effort by federal, provincial and territorial governments to address gaps in connectivity. To date, the CRTC has allocated over $750 million to projects that provide Internet or cell phone services to nearly 50,000 homes in over 290 communities.

This is just some of the work being done in the telecommunications sector.

The third and final point that I'd like to make concerns our consumer protection efforts. Last year, the CRTC created a comprehensive consumer protection action plan.

To implement this plan, we created four public entities designed to prevent unexpected bills, limit charges and make it easier to cross-compare deals and package changes.

This important aspect of our work will remain a key component of the CRTC's action. Stay tuned.

To wrap things up, we are doing work on multiple fronts. I touched on a few of them this afternoon, but the list is long. We are also taking action in areas like international roaming, service outages, and the Online News Act.

We are always listening to what Canadians need, and we know the committee is doing the same. We look forward to hearing your questions and your views.

Thank you again for inviting us to appear before you today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you very much for the opening remarks.

We'll turn now to the Conservative Party for the first round, which will be six minutes.

Mr. Guglielmin, the floor is yours.

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Again, thank you, guys, for taking the time to be with us here today and providing us this briefing from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. I share the chair's remarks on now fully understanding the full name but knowing what it was only in short form before now.

I want to ask you today about the Online News Act, Bill C-18. One of the factors the CRTC must consider under the act is whether local and independent news outlets are truly benefiting.

However, we've already heard from local outlets, such as the River Valley Sun, that their audience essentially disappeared overnight when Meta pulled out. Before Bill C-18, the River Valley Sun, which distributes 6,000 free newspapers monthly, relied heavily on Facebook to share its content. It saw around half a million engagements in a typical month before the news ban saw the audience abruptly cut off.

The ban is also causing financial pain. The River Valley Sun, Theresa Blackburn's newspaper, “used to go live on Facebook at some local events, with the businesses paying for that coverage.” Blackburn said that losing that ability has cost them “the equivalent of two months of printing newspapers, or the cost of hiring a summer student.”

Given what we've seen so far, do you think you can confidently say that independent rural and start-up publishers are benefiting from this legislation, or do you feel that they're being further marginalized?

[Scott Shortliffe, Vice-President, Broadcasting, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission]

It's very important that we support local newspapers in Canada, as well as local radio and television. As the tribunal, we were not responsible for the legislation. We were asked to administer it, so I have to be very careful, because it's not our role either to criticize or to applaud legislation. It's our role to administer it.

What I can say is that we do see that $100 million is flowing into the news system, and it is going to a wide variety of news outlets across Canada. That is not to say that means there are not news outlets that are being negatively affected. It's not to say that there is not more that can be done for news in Canada, but what we can say is that our part of it, which is to ensure that the money flows to both print outlets and broadcasting outlets, is happening.

We will be presenting shortly a public report on what we've seen to date. We will be presenting annual reports. It is part of the legislation, where we try to assess the impact of the Online News Act. Because we're in the first year—I'll be very frank—there's not much for us to say yet, but we certainly want to have an understanding of how it's affecting the news industry in Canada and where the positive effects are. We think that by making this information available, it will also help parliamentarians in the future look at what is necessary to take action.

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you for that detailed response.

Professor Alfred Hermida at the University of British Columbia School of Journalism, who has researched Canadian digital start-ups, estimates that about 30% of local news audiences disappeared overnight due to Meta's blackout.

He stated:

If you're a local startup, the key thing you need to do is develop your audience and social media has become [a] very important [tool] for audience engagement. You don't have the marketing budget and the reach [of] the larger players...so social media is a good way to alert people that you exist.

I'm just curious to know if this kind of fallout was anticipated in the initial consultations. If so, was there feedback given to Parliament or to committee at the time, so that the impact could be considered as part of the legislation implementation?

[Scott Shortliffe]

I have to say, in terms of our public consultations, that that is really more of a question for the Department of Canadian Heritage. We were not responsible for the legislation and what it says. We were people who received the legislation and then had to implement it.

When we've done our public processes around Bill C-18, it was really saying, “This is the state of the legislation.” The legislation says that companies have to self-identify to us, which Google did. Meta chose not to and chose instead to withdraw news from its platform. That was within the ambit of the law, which we had no say on one way or another.

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

The CRTC has been tasked with ensuring fairness and transparency in bargaining, but that framework kicks in only after the negotiations begin. In cases where a platform exists before any bargaining even starts, what options, if any, are available to small publishers? Would you say that this creates a gap in the process that leaves the most vulnerable players without meaningful protection?

[Scott Shortliffe]

I would say that the legislation and the regulations that empowered it were set up so that Google had the option of making a deal with a single distributor, which is called the Canadian Journalism Collective. Although we had to approve that, we did not set up that organization. It has an independent board, and it makes the decisions on whether individual news outlets are eligible to receive funds.

I think it was—and here, I am taking an interpretation—that Parliament intentionally did not want the CRTC to be the ones choosing which news outlets receive funds. Therefore, there is an independent body that does that. We certified that it is a legitimate body, and we will audit it, but we removed ourselves—I'm sorry, we didn't remove ourselves, the legislation removed us—from the question of who exactly will receive funds and whether they qualify under the act.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thanks very much, Mr. Guglielmin.

Ms. Acan, the floor is yours for six minutes.

[Sima Acan, Liberal, Oakville West, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much, witnesses, for coming here today.

I have a few questions, and I will start with the CRTC.

With the growing demand for data and digital services, network reliability is critical to maintaining affordability. What steps is the CRTC taking in collaboration with service providers to strengthen Canada's telecommunications infrastructure against outages and cybersecurity threats?

Also, could you please explain to us how the recent CRTC decision improves affordability and access to high-quality and reliable Internet for Canadians from coast to coast to coast?

Thank you.

[Vicky Eatrides]

I can start, and then I will turn things over to Scott Hutton, who leads the work on reliability. Maybe I'll start with your second question first.

In terms of Internet competition, our recent decision opens things up so that competitors can use the networks of big companies to offer Internet services to consumers in areas where they haven't offered before, so it opens up choice. More competition isn't for the sake of more competition; it's for the sake of lower prices, more choice and all of the good benefits that come from that. That was the thinking behind that decision to open things up and increase competition. It was very focused on Canadians.

At the same time, and coming to your first question before I turn things over to Scott, we also made sure that there were measures in place to continue to promote investment in high-quality networks, because we know that this is very, very important, both on the Internet side and the cellphone side.

We made sure, through the cost, because it's an actual cost-based analysis, that the rates that we have put in place take into account investing in fibre. I mentioned that we have a head start rule. There's a certain period of time when competitors can't access the fibre, and that'll go on. That's the five-year head start rule. There are things that we put in place so that we can ensure continued investment, because we know how important that is.

I'll turn things over to Scott, who leads the work on resiliency for the CRTC, and, again, we work with ISED and many others in that space.

[Scott Hutton, Vice-President, Consumer, Analytics and Strategy, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission]

Certainly the CRTC has been very mindful of what we've seen as a likely growing number of outages and major outages that are having a significant impact on Canadians, so we have put in place a number of different measures, and we are currently doing some work on our regulatory proceedings on a few fronts.

Our first area of concern was that, when an outage occurs, there are certainly impacts on Canadians, but there are also impacts with respect to the safety and security of Canadians, whether it's for alerting purposes or for reaching emergency services.

Our first step was to put in place an interim regime that we've now finalized to prioritize just that, emergency services in that regime, to make sure, when there is an outage, that all parties in a certain area, the emergency response personnel, the teams and the municipalities, are made aware of that, because they need to be able to react and not be surprised in that particular case. We need to be able to report on that front.

Following that piece of work, we are now working in a regulatory proceeding going forward with all of the companies to establish, if I can put it more on the technical side, good practices for network resiliency. How can we work on robustness to get to there? How can we work on making sure of network resiliency for whatever reason, whether it's serious weather events, whether it's breakages or whether it is damage, physical or cyber in nature? We will be looking at that with those companies.

That's a role that we share with the Department of Industry, or ISED, on that front, because they have certain roles with respect to safety of the network, and we're also working with Public Safety.

We're also going to be looking at—and this is where my team does come in a bit more—ensuring that Canadians get information. I mentioned earlier telling emergency personnel right away, but as we're all using our phones and our Internet either running businesses, working from home or doing schooling, there's a whole bunch of situations where people need to know. You need that connection, and you need to know when it's going to come back. You need the right information.

We are looking at that right now to ensure that there are clear guidelines in place about informing Canadians as to what is down. We'll be asking questions as to what is important to Canadians. We clearly know that knowing when service is going to come back up is another one, and there are questions of outage mapping and certain issues of that nature. These are all things that we will be considering in that domain.

We'll also be looking at rebates on that front, because if your service is down for a long period of time, there should be clear rules around that.

[Sima Acan, Liberal, Oakville West, ON]

Thank you.

The second question is about transparency, which is the key to customer retention in the telecommunications sector.

In reference to Bill C-288, which also includes measures to improve broadband services and transparency and became law last year on June 20, what initiatives has the CRTC undertaken to improve the clarity of pricing and contract terms so that consumers can make informed decisions? Also, what data is available to demonstrate the effectiveness of these measures?

[Scott Hutton]

We are moving expeditiously to answer all of the elements that were put in law by that bill and the Budget Implementation Act. We are looking at information—making it easy for Canadians to switch, making sure they're not surprised by bills and that they have a clear place to go to complain, get compensation or have their issues addressed.

[Sima Acan, Liberal, Oakville West, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

It's good to know there are others in the country whom people can complain to, Mr. Hutton.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Mr. Ste‑Marie.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to welcome the three witnesses and thank them for joining us.

I still don't know a lot about the CRTC. I know that it's an independent organization, but that the government can issue it instructions through various ministers. Its activities are also subject to government policy directions.

Is that right?

[Vicky Eatrides]

Yes, that's exactly right.

It's an independent, quasi-judicial tribunal. There are government instructions, including some that concern telecommunications and others that concern broadcasting. The CRTC also receives directives from the government.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

I'm going to completely change topics.

I've been contacted by people involved in community radio and they drew a few things to my attention. For example, during their dealings with the CRTC, especially when it comes to making parameter changes, the response time is extremely long. It often takes several years to get an answer.

Are you looking into reducing these wait times? Are you trying to correct this issue?

[Vicky Eatrides]

Yes, that is happening.

Allow me to start answering the question and then hand the floor over to Scott Shortliffe, since he's the one in charge of broadcasting.

We had actually agreed to discuss this problem, and we understand the situation. We've done a lot of things internally to speed up the process. Our priorities are now very clearly defined.

The problem concerns the fact that the CRTC is a tribunal. Everything it undertakes has to go through public consultations. The CRTC holds public hearings and consultations, and that takes time. However, things can be done differently and that's what the CRTC is doing.

I'll now give the floor to Scott Shortliffe.

[Scott Shortliffe]

I can add a few clarifications.

After the Broadcasting Act was adopted, we launched some consultations. I think there were 15 consultations in all, including four public hearings. One of them focused specifically on modernizing the Broadcasting Act. We asked questions to determine whether there was some way to ease the regulatory load. It's important to strike the right balance between complying with public policies and ensuring that companies operate effectively. At present, our files suggest that the process may be too onerous.

Certain decisions expected in the near future may resolve this issue.